“Before PartingA MONTH or twain to live on honeycombIs pleasant; but one tires of scented time,Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme,And that strong purple under juice and foamWhere the wine’s heart has burst;Nor feel the latter kisses like the first.Once yet, this poor one time; I will not prayEven to change the bitterness of it,The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet,To make your tears fall where your soft hair layAll blurred and heavy in some perfumed wiseOver my face and eyes.And yet who knows what end the scythèd wheatMakes of its foolish poppies’ mouths of red?These were not sown, these are not harvested,They grow a month and are cast under feetAnd none has care thereof,As none has care of a divided love.I know each shadow of your lips by rote,Each change of love in eyelids and eyebrows;The fashion of fair temples tremulousWith tender blood, and colour of your throat;I know not how love is gone out of this,Seeing that all was his.Love’s likeness there endures upon all these:But out of these one shall not gather love.Day hath not strength nor the night shade enoughTo make love whole and fill his lips with ease,As some bee-builded cellFeels at filled lips the heavy honey swell.I know not how this last month leaves your hairLess full of purple colour and hid spice,And that luxurious trouble of closed eyesIs mixed with meaner shadow and waste care;And love, kissed out by pleasure, seems not yetWorth patience to regret.”

“As the dawn loves the sunlight that must ceaseEre dawn again may rise and pass in peace;Must die that she being dead may live again,To be by his new rising nearly slain.So rolls the great wheel of the great world round,And no change in it and no fault is found,And no true life of perdurable breath,And surely no irrevocable death.Day after day night comes that day may break,And day comes back for night’s reiterate sake.Each into each dies, each of each is born:Day past is night, shall night past not be morn?Out of this moonless and faint-hearted nightThat love yet lives in, shall there not be light?Light strong as love, that love may live in yet?Alas, but how shall foolish hope forgetHow all these loving things that kill and dieMeet not but for a breath’s space and pass by?Night is kissed once of dawn and dies, and dayBut touches twilight and is rapt away.So may my love and her love meet once more,And meeting be divided as of yore.Yea, surely as the day-star loves the sunAnd when he hath risen is utterly undone,So is my love of her and hers of me—And its most sweetness bitter as the sea.”

“I dare not always touch her, lest the kiss leave my lips charred. Yea, Lord, a little bliss, brief bitter bliss, one hath for a great sin; Nathless thou knowest how sweet a thing it is.”

“And with light lips yet full of their swift smile,And hands that wist not though they dug a grave,Undid the hasps of gold, and drank, and gave,And he drank after, a deep glad kingly draught:And all their life changed in them, for they quaffedDeath; if it be death so to drink, and fareAs men who change and are what these twain were.And shuddering with eyes full of fear and fireAnd heart-stung with a serpentine desireHe turned and saw the terror in her eyesThat yearned upon him shining in such wiseAs a star midway in the midnight fixed. Their Galahault was the cup, and she that mixed;Nor other hand there needed, nor sweet speechTo lure their lips together; each on eachHung with strange eyes and hovered as a birdWounded, and each mouth trembled for a world;Their heads neared, and their hands were drawn in one,And they saw dark, though still the unsunken sunFar through fine rain shot fire into the south;And their four lips became one burning mouth.”

“And thither, ere sweet night had slain sweet day,Iseult and Tristram took their wandering way,And rested, and refreshed their hearts with cheerIn hunters' fashion of the woods; and hereMore sweet it seemed, while this might be, to dwellAnd take of all world's weariness farewellThan reign of all world's lordship queen and king.Nor here would time for three moon's changes bringSorrow nor thought of sorrow; but sweet earthFostered them like her babes of eldest birth,Reared warm in pathless woods and cherished well.And the sun sprang above the sea and fell,And the stars rose and sank upon the sea;And outlaw-like, in forest wise and free,The rising and the setting of their lightsFound those twain dwelling all those days and nights.And under change of sun and star and moonFlourished and fell the chaplets woven of June,And fair through fervours of the deepening skyPanted and passed the hours that lit July,And each day blessed them out of heaven above,And each night crowned them with the crown of love.Nor till the might of August overheadWeighed on the world was yet one roseleaf shedOf all their joy's warm coronal, nor aughtTouched them in passing ever with a thoughtThat ever this might end on any dayOr any night not love them where they lay;But like a babbling tale of barren breathSeemed all report and rumour held of death,And a false bruit the legend tear impearledThat such a thing as change was in the world.”

“Love, that is first and last of all things made,The light that has the living world for shade,The spirit that for temporal veil has onThe souls of all men woven in unison,One fiery raiment with all lives inwroughtAnd lights of sunny and starry deed and thought,And alway through new act and passion newShines the divine same body and beauty through,The body spiritual of fire and lightThat is to worldly noon as noon to night;Love, that is flesh upon the spirit of manAnd spirit within the flesh whence breath began;Love, that keeps all the choir of lives in chime;Love, that is blood within the veins of time;That wrought the whole world without stroke of hand,Shaping the breadth of sea, the length of land,And with the pulse and motion of his breathThrough the great heart of the earth strikes life and death,The sweet twain chords that make the sweet tune liveThrough day and night of things alternative,Through silence and through sound of stress and strife,And ebb and flow of dying death and life:Love, that sounds loud or light in all men's ears,Whence all men's eyes take fire from sparks of tears,That binds on all men's feet or chains or wings;Love that is root and fruit of terrene things;Love, that the whole world's waters shall not drown,The whole world's fiery forces not burn down;Love, that what time his own hands guard his headThe whole world's wrath and strength shall not strike dead;Love, that if once his own hands make his graveThe whole world's pity and sorrow shall not save;Love, that for very life shall not be sold,Nor bought nor bound with iron nor with gold;So strong that heaven, could love bid heaven farewell,Would turn to fruitless and unflowering hell;So sweet that hell, to hell could love be given,Would turn to splendid and sonorous heaven;Love that is fire within thee and light above,And lives by grace of nothing but of love;Through many and lovely thoughts and much desireLed these twain to the life of tears and fire;Through many and lovely days and much delightLed these twain to the lifeless life of night.”

“A MatchIf love were what the rose is,And I were like the leaf,Our lives would grow togetherIn sad or singing weather,Blown fields or flowerful closes,Green pasture or gray grief;If love were what the rose is,And I were like the leaf.If I were what the words are,And love were like the tune,With double sound and singleDelight our lips would mingle,With kisses glad as birds areThat get sweet rain at noon;If I were what the words are,And love were like the tune.If you were life, my darling,And I your love were death,We'd shine and snow togetherEre March made sweet the weatherWith daffodil and starlingAnd hours of fruitful breath;If you were life, my darling,And I your love were death.If you were thrall to sorrow,And I were page to joy,We'd play for lives and seasonsWith loving looks and treasonsAnd tears of night and morrowAnd laughs of maid and boy;If you were thrall to sorrow,And I were page to joy.If you were April's lady,And I were lord in May,We'd throw with leaves for hoursAnd draw for days with flowers,Till day like night were shadyAnd night were bright like day;If you were April's lady,And I were lord in May.If you were queen of pleasure,And I were king of pain,We'd hunt down love together,Pluck out his flying-feather,And teach his feet a measure,And find his mouth a rein;If you were queen of pleasure,And I were king of pain.”