Yet if some voice that man could trust Should murmur from the narrow house, 'The cheeks drop in, the body bows; Man dies, nor is there hope in dust;' Might I not say? 'Yet even here, But for one hour, O Love, I strive To keep so sweet a thing alive.' But I should turn mine ears and hear The moanings of the homeless sea, The sound of streams that swift or slow Draw down AEonian hills, and sow The dust of continents to be; And Love would answer with a sigh, 'The sound of that forgetful shore Will change my sweetness more and more, Half-dead to know that I shall die.' O me, what profits it to put An idle case? If Death were seen At first as Death, Love had not been, Or been in narrowest working shut, Mere fellowship of sluggish moods, Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape Had bruised the herb and crush'd the grape, And bask'd and batten'd in the woods. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...JILTED by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR TO THE SOUR READER by ROBERT HERRICK FRIENDSHIP'S MYSTERY, TO MY DEAREST LUCASIA by KATHERINE PHILIPS FRIAR JEROME'S BEAUTIFUL BOOK; A.D. 1200 by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH BENEDICTION IN PASSING by IRENE CARLISLE |