XXXV.
 

Might I not say? ‘Yet even here,
    But for one hour, O Love, I strive
    To keep so sweet a thing alive:’
But I should turn mine ears and hear

The moanings of the homeless sea,
    The sound of streams that swift or slow
    Draw down Æonian hills, and sow
The dust of continents to be;

And Love would answer with a sigh,
    ‘The sound of that forgetful shore
    Will change my sweetness more and more,
Half-dead to know that I shall die.’

O me, what profits it to put
    And idle case? If Death were seen
    At first as Death, Love had not been,
Or been in narrowest working shut,

Mere fellowship of sluggish moods,
    Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape
    Had bruised the herb and crush’d the grape,
And bask’d and batten’d in the woods.