“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.”

“I dore not always touch her, lest the kissLeave 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.”

“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 will go back to the great sweet mother,Mother and lover of men, the sea.I will go down to her, I and none other,Close with her, kiss her, and mix her with me.Cling to her, strive with her, hold her fast;O fair white mother, in days long passedBorn without sister, born without brother,Set free my soul as thy soul is free.”

“She knows not loves that kissed her She knows not where.Art thou the ghost, my sister, White sister there, Am I the ghost, who knows? My hand, a fallen rose, Lies snow-white on white snows, and takes no care. ”

“And her heart sprang in Iseult, and she drewWith all her spirit and life the sunrise throughAnd through her lips the keen triumphant airSea-scented, sweeter than land-roses were,And through her eyes the whole rejoicing eastSun-satisfied, and all the heaven at feastSpread for the morning; and the imperious mirthOf wind and light that moved upon the earth,Making the spring, and all the fruitful mightAnd strong regeneration of delightThat swells the seedling leaf and sapling man,Since the first life in the first world beganTo burn and burgeon through void limbs and veins,And the first love with sharp sweet procreant painsTo pierce and bring forth roses; yea, she feltThrough her own soul the sovereign morning melt,And all the sacred passion of the sun;And as the young clouds flamed and were undoneAbout him coming, touched and burnt awayIn rosy ruin and yellow spoil of day,The sweet veil of her body and corporal senseFelt the dawn also cleave it, and incenseWith light from inward and with effluent heatThe kindling soul through fleshly hands and feet.And as the august great blossom of the dawnBurst, and the full sun scarce from sea withdrawnSeemed on the fiery water a flower afloat,So as a fire the mighty morning smoteThroughout her, and incensed with the influent hourHer whole soul's one great mystical red flowerBurst, and the bud of her sweet spirit brokeRose-fashion, and the strong spring at a strokeThrilled, and was cloven, and from the full sheath cameThe whole rose of the woman red as flame:And all her Mayday blood as from a swoonFlushed, and May rose up in her and was June.So for a space her hearth as heavenward burned:Then with half summer in her eyes she turned,And on her lips was April yet, and smiled,As though the spirit and sense unreconciledShrank laughing back, and would not ere its hourLet life put forth the irrevocable flower.And the soft speech between them grew again”