Phaon
The flower. I loved you then, and love you now.
The torn plumes of the wayward wings I take,
The ruined rose, and all the empty cruse;
Here I accept the bitter with the sweet,
The autumnal sorrow with the autumnal gold;
Tears shall go unregretted, and much pain
Gladly I take, if grief, in truth, and you
Go hand in hand.
Sappho
Go hand in hand. Ask me no more! For good
Were life, indeed, if every lonely bough
Could lure again the migrant nightingale!
—If all that luting music of first love
Could be recalled down years grown desolate!
Lightly they sing who love and are beloved;
And men shall lightly listen; but the heart
Forlorn of hope, that hides its wound in song,
Remembered is through many years and lands.
And I have wept and sung, and I have known
So many hours of sorrow—all for you!
Phaon
What Love remembers little things?—what wave
Withholds itself for sighs of broken reeds?
Sappho
The wave remembers not, till reed by reed
The lyric shores of youth lie ruinous;
It was not much I asked in those old days;—
As waters come whence reeds may never see,
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