Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DIVISIONS ON A GROUND: 4, by ARTHUR WILLIAM SYMONS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DIVISIONS ON A GROUND: 4, by             Poet's Biography
First Line: Who shall deliver us from too much love?
Last Line: Love, that he makes so deadly and his toy!


Who shall deliver us from too much love?
There is an evil thing within the world,
Mother of hatred, mother of cruelties,
The sunderer of hearts; and this is love.
I, if mine enemy hunger, give him food,
And, if mine enemy thirst, give him to drink;
This is a little and an easy thing.
But, if I heap the dish with only love,
In any charity, for love's sake alone,
Fate shall not hold me guiltless of that deed.
For sorrow goes with it, and bitter joy,
And memory, and the desire of love,
And aching of remembering hearts remembered.
There is an evil thing within the heart:
Grief shall not master it nor any fear,
Nor any knowledge, nor desire of right;
Love in the heart shall shine within the eyes,
Giving itself in gift, withholding nothing;
And where the man gives shall the woman take,
And where the woman gives the man shall take,
Not counting gifts, giving and taking all,
Ruinously, a plague upon the earth.
O giver of this love, give man to see
The glory of thine intolerable gift,
Or snatch again out of his passionate hands,
Out of his passionate and childish hands,
That beautiful and sharp and fragile thing,
Love, that he makes so deadly and his toy!





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