COME, sweetheart, hear me! I have loved thee well, God knoweth. Through all these years my holiest thoughts, Like those pure doves nurtured in antique temples, Have fluttered ever round thine image fair, And found in thee their shrine. No tenderest hope Of mine, which hath not warmed its radiant wings Within that heaven, thy presence, and drank strength And sunshine from it. How hast thou responded? Sometimes thine eyes, like Eden gates unclosed, Would pour such beams of sacred passion down, That all my soul was flooded with its joy, And I, methought, breathed as immortals breathe, A deathless light and ether. Then, when most I dreamed me happy, a strange change would come, Sudden as strange; some wind of cold caprice, Blowing, I knew not whence, an icy cloud Upbore, and o'er the splendor of thy brow, Of late so frankly beautiful, there hung Ominous shadows, crossed by gleams of scorn; Trifles as slight as eider-down have power To move or sting thee, and a swarm of humors, Gendered of morbid fancy, buzz and hiss About some vacant chambers of thy mind, By idle thoughts left open, making harsh, Rude discord, where, if healthful will had sway, Angels, perchance, might lift celestial voices! Love, love, thou wrong'st thyself, and that sweet nature, Sweet at the core, for all such small despites, Wherewith kind heaven endowed thee; yet, beware! Caprice, though frail its shafts, a poisoned barb Hath bound on each; their points are sharp to wound, And the wounds rankle! Giants great as Love Have perished merely of an insect's venom, And who through all God's universe can touch Love's pulseless heart to warmth and life again? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...BEFORE THE FLOWERS OF FRIENDSHIP FADED FADED: 21 by GERTRUDE STEIN ODES II, 10 by QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS TO HIM THAT WAS CRUCIFIED by WALT WHITMAN WHEN I PERUSE THE CONQUER'D FAME by WALT WHITMAN SONNET TO BRITAIN by WILLIAM EDMONSTOUNE AYTOUN |