O cold remembrance, careful-careless kiss, That does not wake to hope with waking day, And at the hour of bed-time does not say: "That was for rapture, that for peace, but this Burns for the night's more terrible auspices, And pangs and sweets of doubt and disarray!"-- Yet in one kiss two hearts found once the way From perfect ignorance to perfect bliss.
Love has so many voices, low and high. Such range of reason, such delight of rhyme! Yet when I asked love such a simple thing As why the autumn comes where came the spring, The only soul that answered me was I, And love was silent then for the first time.
Our love is hurt, and the bad world goes on Moving to its conclusion: in a year This corn now reaped will come again to ear, The moon will shine as last night the moon shone; The tide, whose thought is the moon's thought, will don The silver livery of subjection. Dear, Is it not strange that hearts will hope and fear And break, when our hearts, broken now, are gone?
If this were true, life's movement would rebel, And curdle to its source, as blood to the heart When the cold fires of indignation start From their obscure lair in the body.--Well, If for us two to part were just to part All years would have one pointless tale to tell.
The little things, the little restless things, The base and barren things, the things that spite The day, and trail processions through the night Of sad remembrances and questionings; The poverties, stupidities and stings, The silted misery, the hovering blight; The things that block the paths of sound and sight; The things that snare our thought and break its wings--
How shall we bear these?--we who suffer so The shattering sacrifice, the huge despair, The terrors loosed like lightnings on the air, To leave all nature blackened from that curse! The big things are the enemies we know, The little things the traitors. Which are worse?
Now must we gather up and comprehend The volume of vicissitude, and take Account of loving, for each other's sake, And ask how love began and how will end (If there be any end of love, O friend Of my worst hours and best desires!)--and stake Our all upon the sweetness and the ache Of what men's stories and God's stars intend.