NEITHER FAITH NOR BEAUTY CAN REMAIN
Neither faith nor beauty can remain:
Change is our life from hour to hour,
Pain follows after pain,
As ruined flower lies down with ruined flower.
*****
Now you are mine. But in a day to be
Beyond the seas, in cities strange and new
To-day will be a memory
Of a day ephemerally true.
*****
Last night with cheek pressed close to cheek
Through the brief hours we slept.
It must be always so, I heard you speak,
Love found, forever must be kept.
*****
But already we were changed, even as the day
Invisibly transforms its light.
We prayed together then for dawn's delay,
Praying, praying through the night.
*****
Against the change which takes all loveliness,
The truth our desperate hearts would keep,
The memory to be, when comfortless,
Save for the memory we shall yearn for sleep;
*****
Against the sinking flame which no more lights
Our faces, neither any more desired
Through desireless days and nights,
And senses fast expiring and expired.
THE END.
Printed in the United States of America.