Two Ways of Love.
51
The hearts that heard them. What a shadowy thing
For barrier between my love and me!
A marriage? That? A patter from a book,
A fine-phrased mockery. Oh Heaven! and this
Poor pallid ghost you raise to bid me stand———
For barrier between my love and me!
A marriage? That? A patter from a book,
A fine-phrased mockery. Oh Heaven! and this
Poor pallid ghost you raise to bid me stand———
Tom—
It was a marriage, legal, binding, fixed
As firm as laws of God and man can bind.
No sophistry can make it less———
It was a marriage, legal, binding, fixed
As firm as laws of God and man can bind.
No sophistry can make it less———
Adrienne—Oh, true!
For who can make of nothing even less?
And it is nothing. Listen! Long ago—
You know, perhaps, how long—for me the years
Were petrified, they neither came nor went—
But you, perhaps you lived, and you can say
How long it is ago that I was young.
Just seventeen! Think of it—a very child!
As ignorant of evil as a flower,
And quite as beautiful. Do you recall
The look I wore? See here, this photograph—
I keep it as the learned doctors keep
Recovered relics of a bygone age.
For who can make of nothing even less?
And it is nothing. Listen! Long ago—
You know, perhaps, how long—for me the years
Were petrified, they neither came nor went—
But you, perhaps you lived, and you can say
How long it is ago that I was young.
Just seventeen! Think of it—a very child!
As ignorant of evil as a flower,
And quite as beautiful. Do you recall
The look I wore? See here, this photograph—
I keep it as the learned doctors keep
Recovered relics of a bygone age.
