Page:Poems Craik.djvu/236

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218
A MAN'S WOOING.
"Not one true man": I hear it still,
Your voice's clear cold sound,
Upholding all your constant swains
And good knights underground.

"Not one true lover":—Woman,turn;
I love you. Words are small;
'T is life speaks plain: In twenty years
Perhaps you may know all.

I seek you. You alone I seek:
All other women, fair,
Or wise, or good, may go their way,
Without my thought or care.

But you I follow day by day,
And night by night I keep
My heart's chaste mansion lighted, where
Your image lies asleep.

Asleep! If e'er to wake, He knows
Who Eve to Adam brought,
As you to me: the embodiment
Of boyhood's dear sweet thought,

And youth's fond dream, and manhood's hope,
That still half hopeless shone;
Till every rootless vain ideal
Commingled into one,—