War and Love/Postlude

by Richard Aldington

 

POSTLUDE

Have I spoken too much or not enough of love?
Who can tell?

But we who do not drug ourselves with lies
Know, with how deep a pathos, that we have
Only the warmth and beauty of this world
Before the blankness of the unending gloom.
Here for a little while, we see the sun
And smell the grape-vines on the terraced hills,
And sing and weep, fight, starve and feast, and love
Lips and soft breasts too sweet for innocence.
And in this little glow of mortal life—
Faint as one candle in a large cold room—
We know the clearest light is fed by love,
That when we kiss with life-blood in our lips
Then we are nearest to the dreamed-of gods.