Take hands and part with laughter; | |
Touch lips and part with tears; | |
Once more and no more after, | |
Whatever comes with years. | |
We twain shall not remeasure | |
The ways that left us twain; | |
Nor crush the lees of pleasure | |
From sanguine grapes of pain. | |
We twain once well in sunder, | |
10 | What will the mad gods do |
For hate with me, I wonder, | |
Or what for love with you? | |
Forget them till November, | |
And dream there’s April yet; | |
Forget that I remember, | |
And dream that I forget. | |
Time found our tired love sleeping, | |
And kissed away his breath; | |
But what should we do weeping, | |
20 | Though light love sleep to death? |
We have drained his lips at leisure, | |
Till there’s not left to drain | |
A single sob of pleasure, | |
A single pulse of pain. | |
Dream that the lips once breathless | |
Might quicken if they would; | |
Say that the soul is deathless; | |
Dream that the gods are good; | |
Say March may wed September, | |
30 | And time divorce regret; |
But not that you remember, | |
And not that I forget. | |
We have heard from hidden places | |
What love scarce lives and hears: | |
We have seen on fervent faces | |
The pallor of strange tears: | |
We have trod the wine-vat’s treasure, | |
Whence, ripe to steam and stain, | |
Foams round the feet of pleasure | |
40 | The blood-red must of pain. |
Remembrance may recover | |
And time bring back to time | |
The name of your first lover, | |
The ring of my first rhyme; | |
But rose-leaves of December | |
The frosts of June shall fret, | |
The day that you remember, | |
The day that I forget. | |
The snake that hides and hisses | |
50 | In heaven we twain have known; |
The grief of cruel kisses, | |
The joy whose mouth makes moan; | |
The pulse’s pause and measure, | |
Where in one furtive vein | |
Throbs through the heart of pleasure | |
The purpler blood of pain. | |
We have done with tears and treasons | |
And love for treason’s sake; | |
Room for the swift new seasons, | |
60 | The years that burn and break, |
Dismantle and dismember | |
Men’s days and dreams, Juliette; | |
For love may not remember, | |
But time will not forget. | |
Life treads down love in flying, | |
Time withers him at root; | |
Bring all dead things and dying, | |
Reaped sheaf and ruined fruit, | |
Where, crushed by three days’ pressure, | |
70 | Our three days’ love lies slain; |
And earlier leaf of pleasure, | |
And latter flower of pain. | |
Breathe close upon the ashes, | |
It may be flame will leap; | |
Unclose the soft close lashes, | |
Lift up the lids, and weep. | |
Light love’s extinguished ember, | |
Let one tear leave it wet | |
For one that you remember | |
80 | And ten that you forget. |