Wessex Poems and Other Verses/She, to Him, IV

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Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1899)
by Thomas Hardy
She, to Him, IV
3666805Wessex Poems and Other Verses — She, to Him, IV1899Thomas Hardy

SHE, TO HIM

iv

THIS love puts all humanity from me:
I can but maledict her, pray her dead,
For giving love and getting love of thee—
Feeding a heart that else mine own had fed!

How much I love I know not, life not known,
Save as some unit I would add love by;
But this I know, my being is but thine own—
Fused from its separateness by ecstasy,

And thus I grasp thy amplitudes, of her
Ungrasped, though helped by nigh-regarding eyes;
Canst thou then hate me as an envier
Who see unrecked what I so dearly prize?
Believe me, Lost One, Love is lovelier
The more it shapes its moan in selfish-wise.

1866.