LET all things vanish, if but you remain; For if you stay, beloved, what is gone? Yet, should you go, all permanence is vain, And all the piled abundance is as none. With you beside me in the desert sand, Your smile upon me, and on mine your hand, Oases green arise, and camel-bells; For in the long adventure of your eyes Are all the wandering ways to Paradise. Existence, in your being, comes and goes; What were the garden, love, without the rose? In vain were ears to hear, And eyes in vain, Lacking your ordered music, sphere to sphere, Blind, should your beauty blossom not again. The pulse that shakes the world with rhythmic beat Is but the passing of your little feet; And all the singing vast of all the seas, Down from the pole To the Hesperides, Is but the praying echo of your soul. Therefore, beloved, know that this is true -- The world exists and vanishes in you! 'Tis not a lover's fancy; ask the sky If all its stars depend not, even as I, Upon your eyelids, when they open or close; And let the garden answer with the rose. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: JOHN WASSON by EDGAR LEE MASTERS HAWORTH CHURCHYARD by MATTHEW ARNOLD THIRD BOOK OF AIRS: SONG 18. THE CHARM by THOMAS CAMPION APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE SONGS ON THE VOICES OF BIRDS; SEA-MEWS IN WINTER TIME by JEAN INGELOW THE MAGI by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS PEARLS OF THE FAITH: 93. AL-NOOR by EDWIN ARNOLD |