SINCE thus I have endowed you with the whole Joy of my flesh and treasure of my soul, And your life debt to me looms so supreme, Shall my love wax ungenerous as to seem By sign or supplication to demand An answering gift from your reluctant hand? Give what you will ... if aught be yours to give! But tho' you are the breath by which I live And all my days are a consuming pyre Of unaccomplished longing and desire, How shall my love beseech you or beset Your heart with sad remembrance and regret? Quenched are the fervent words I yearn to speak, And tho' I die, how shall I claim or seek From your full rivers one reviving shower, From your resplendent years one single hour? Still for Love's sake I am foredoomed to bear A load of passionate silence and despair. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HIRAM POWERS' GREEK SLAVE by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING ODE TO SIMPLICITY by WILLIAM COLLINS (1721-1759) SCILLA'S METAMORPHOSIS: MELANCHOLY by THOMAS LODGE OF A CONTENTED MIND [OR, SPIRIT] by THOMAS VAUX OUT FROM BEHIND THIS MASK by WALT WHITMAN |