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Home  »  The World’s Best Poetry  »  Love’s Memory

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

II. Parting and Absence

Love’s Memory

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

From “All ’s Well That Ends Well,” Act I. Sc. 1.

I AM undone: there is no living, none,

If Bertram be away. It were all one,

That I should love a bright particular star,

And think to wed it, he is so above me:

In his bright radiance and collateral light

Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.

The ambition in my love thus plagues itself:

The hind that would be mated by the lion

Must die for love. ’T was pretty, though a plague,

To see him every hour; to sit and draw

His archèd brows, his hawking eye, his curls,

In our heart’s table,—heart too capable

Of every line and trick of his sweet favor:

But now he ’s gone, and my idolatrous fancy

Must sanctify his relics.