 | The poems of Trumbull Stickney |  |
264
[XIV
When by you lies my broken heart, and I]
When by you lies my broken heart, and I,Up on the hill where of this world is heard
At most the love note of a vernal bird
And breaking leaves that flutter in the sky;
When nothing more of all this agony
And strange disease that in our body stirred,
Is left, and with mine ashes are interred
My hope and name and all that I might be;
If then one said it differed not, to live
Or not to live, since living all is death,
And seeing then, beyond the yews and grove,
The fading fragments that our years did give,
Should say 't were better never to feel breath,
I answer, No. For life is less than love.
[1895–96]
| The poems of Trumbull Stickney | |