Studies of Sensation and Event :: :: University of Virginia Library

It were to live not! Lady! cease thy pleading,
“Love not, love not,”—words indeed “vainly spoken;”
The heart will love, even when torn and bleeding,
Yea, love that very one by whom 'tis broken:
Oh love then! love!

Love! love! though it be true the loved may change!
For thine agony in his alien caressing
Will sink to a sad calm, and cannot estrange
Thy power to love him still with measureless blessing:
Oh love then! love!

168

Yea, even then loving, when pales with fear his brow,
At his own inconstancy,—thou shalt awaken
To a wild sweet bliss in striving more to endow
With beauty and truth the one for whom thou wert forsaken:
Oh love then! love!

Love! love! albeit the loved may die,—yet love!
Canst not thou die! the loving grave-descender
Burns with a rapturous joy that never may move
The unloving wanderer down whole lives of splendour:
Oh love then! love!

Though one brief love-hour may order years of sorrow,
Love! love! for that one hour will make thee know,
How, long as earth rolls round from morn tomorrow,
Will its myriad peoples pant with love's wild glow:
Oh love then! love!

Yea! for this knowledge even from oblivion's tomb

169

Banishes disgust; who, who disdains to end,
Knowing the love-bliss, that while life shall bloom,
Over his grave shall deepeningly expend.
Oh love then! love!