The first rose on my rose-tree Budded, bloomed, and shattered, During sad days when to me Nothing mattered. Grief of grief has drained me clean; Still it seems a pity No one saw,βit must have been Very pretty.
Ebb I know what my heart is like Since your love died: It is like a hollow ledge Holding a little pool Left there by the tide, A little tepid pool, Drying inward from the edge.
Love is Not All Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. It well may be that in a difficult hour, Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, Or nagged by want past resolutionβs power, I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory of this night for food. It well may be. I do not think I would.
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning, but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: I cannot say what loves have come and gone, I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more.
I've written so many verses and keep on writing so many more that I became afraid that if I didn't write them into one big book, I might forget some of them.
The soul can split the sky in two and let the face of God shine through.
