Sweet, I blame you not,
for mine the fault was,
had I not been made of common clay
I had climbed
the higher heights unclimbed yet,
seen the fuller air,
the larger day.
From the wildness
of my wasted passion
I had struck a better,
clearer song,
Lit some lighter
light of freer freedom,
battled with some Hydra-headed wrong.
Had my lips
been smitten into music
by the kisses
that but made them bleed,
You had walked with Bice
and the angels
on that verdant and enamelled meed.
I had trod the road
which Dante treading saw
the suns of seven circles shine,
Ay! perchance had seen
the heavens opening,
as they opened to the Florentine.
And the mighty nations
would have crowned me,
who am crownless now
and without name,
And some orient dawn
had found me kneeling
on the threshold of the House of Fame.
I had sat within
that marble circle
where the oldest bard
is as the young,
And the pipe
is ever dropping honey,
and the lyre's strings are ever strung.
Keats had lifted up
his hymeneal curls
from out the poppy-seeded wine,
With ambrosial mouth
had kissed my forehead,
clasped the hand
of noble love in mine.
And at springtide,
when the apple-blossoms
brush the burnished bosom
of the dove,
Two young lovers lying in an orchard
would have read
the story of our love;
Would have read
the legend of my passion,
known the bitter secret of my heart,
Kissed as we have kissed,
but never parted
as we two are fated now to part.
For the crimson flower of our life
is eaten by the cankerworm of truth,
And no hand can
gather up the fallen
withered petals of the rose of youth.
Yet I am not sorry
that I loved you -ah!
what else had I a boy to do? -
For the hungry teeth of time devour,
and the silent-footed years pursue.
Rudderless,
we drift athwart a tempest,
and when once the storm of youth is past,
Without lyre,
without lute or chorus,
Death the silent pilot comes at last.
And within the grave
there is no pleasure,
for the blindworm battens on the root,
And Desire shudders into ashes,
and the tree of Passion bears no fruit.
Ah! what else had I to do but love you?
God's own mother was less dear to me,
And less dear the Cytheraean rising
like an argent lily from the sea.
I have made my choice,
have lived my poems,
and, though youth is gone
in wasted days,
I have found the lover's crown of myrtle
better than the poet's crown of bays.
