Let me remember when you loved me best. When the intolerable rage possessed The spirit of your senses, and the breath As of the rushing of the winds of death Rapt you from earth, and in a fiery trance Exalted your transfigured countenance And bade your heart be rapturously still? Or in the holy silence of that thrill Which stirs the little heart of grass, and swings The worlds upon their windy chariotings? Or in the haunted trouble of those deep Enchantments of your visionary sleep, Ardent with dreams, and the delicious strife Of phantoms passionate with waking life? Or when, as a fond mother o'er her child, You bent above me, and the mother smiled Upon the man re-born to be her own, Flesh of her very flesh, bone of her bone? Of all your kisses which supremest one Out of the immeasurable million? Or which denied, as on a certain day You tremulously turned your lips away, And I, who wronged you, thinking you unkind, Found it love's penance for a troubled mind, Grieved it had done some little wrong to love? Out of your silences which most did move The eternal heart of silence, ancient peace? Or did you love me best, and then increase The best with better, till at last we stood, As he who was love's laureate in each mood Of passionate communion bids us stand, First among lovers when but hand in hand? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...GROWING OLD by FRANCIS LEDWIDGE ONLY WAITING by FRANCES LAUGHTON MACE BLESSINGS by PIERRE JEAN DE BERANGER NATALIA'S RESURRECTION: 13 by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT INSTRUCTIONS FOR A BALLET by MAXWELL BODENHEIM LINES WRITTEN AT SHURTON BARS, NEAR BRIDGEWATER by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE |