That women ask, and then with cruel hands
Set free the singing voices from the cage,
And shook the glory from the waiting rose;
And in life’s empty garden still I clung
To this, and called it love, and seemed content!
Love! Love! ’Tis we who lose it know it best!
Love! Love! It gleams all gold and marble white
High on the headlands of our troubled lives
Pure as this golden temple of the Sun
To twilit eyes; by day a luring star