The Yellow Book/Volume 5/Perennial
< The Yellow Book | Volume 5
Perennial
By Ernest Wentworth
SHE asked her lover, smiling, "If one blend
Two sweet sounds in a perfect symphony,
Or two harmonious colours till they lend
A selfsame hue,—tell me, what alchemy
Can part them after? . . . So myself and thee,
My life and thine, fast mingled, nought can rend
Asunder ever"—Nay, but hear the end.
The lovers' lives, sometime thus wholly one,—
One in minds' thought, hearts' wish, and bodies' breath,-
Now singly such far-severed courses run
As if each had survived the other's death.
Oh, sad strange thing! Yet, as the Wise Man saith,
There is no new thing underneath the sun.
How early, then, were such sad things begun!