There were four loves that one by one, | |
Following the seasons and the sun, | |
Passed over without tears, and fell | |
Away without farewell. | |
The first was made of gold and tears, | |
The next of aspen-leaves and fears, | |
The third of rose-boughs and rose-roots, | |
The last love of strange fruits. | |
These were the four loves faded. Hold | |
10 | Some minutes fast the time of gold |
When our lips each way clung and clove | |
To a face full of love. | |
The tears inside our eyelids met, | |
Wrung forth with kissing, and wept wet | |
The faces cleaving each to each | |
Where the blood served for speech. | |
The second, with low patient brows | |
Bound under aspen-coloured boughs | |
And eyes made strong and grave with sleep | |
20 | And yet too weak to weep – |
The third, with eager mouth at ease | |
Fed from late autumn honey, lees | |
Of scarce gold left in latter cells | |
With scattered flower-smells – | |
Hair sprinkled over with spoilt sweet | |
Of ruined roses, wrists and feet | |
Slight-swathed, as grassy-girdled sheaves | |
Hold in stray poppy-leaves – | |
The fourth, with lips whereon has bled | |
30 | Some great pale fruit’s slow colour, shed |
From the rank bitten husk whence drips | |
Faint blood between her lips – | |
Made of the heat of whole great Junes | |
Burning the blue dark round their moons | |
(Each like a mown red marigold) | |
So hard the flame keeps hold – | |
These are burnt thoroughly away. | |
Only the first holds out a day | |
Beyond these latter loves that were | |
40 | Made of mere heat and air. |
And now the time is winterly | |
The first love fades too: none will see, | |
When April warms the world anew, | |
The place wherein love grew. |