[DECEMBER]
In some few years, when you and I—
Perhaps in some few months—shall lie,
Where lie at last everyone must,
Little will it approve our dust
That one shall write above our tombs:
"They gave their days to glums and glooms."
Much rather had I someone said:
"They loved to wantonness, these dead."
"They kissed too much," I'd have one say,
"Until they kissed their souls away.
Still they were young, and, lip to lip,
They found a way to make Time skip;
And they were bold enough to find
A way to brave him, mind to mind;
And sometimes, by their deadly art,
They caught and crushed him, heart to heart."
This elegy methinks becomes
Us better than our glooms and glums.
1915.
[LETTER TO A LADY II]
Sept. 1916.
No: I was not made for love;
I was made for easier things,
Ecstasies on paper wings,
Agonies that end in laughter
—Smoke or kisses coming after—
Not for love.
I was made for airy thinking,
Nimble sallies, champagne-drinking,
Badinage and argument,
Reading's infinite content,
Ill-considered merriment,
Friendship, anything but love.
Made for singing little songs,
Made for righting little wrongs,
Made to taste whate'er there be
Of loveliness and gaiety
On this variegated earth;
Made for sentiment and mirth
And light romance, perhaps just worth
A smile from Art, a nod from Truth,
I, apt for a fantastic youth
Of follies, an old age of thought,
And never thinking to be caught
As now I am, said "Never mind
Love, for Love, you know, is blind."
I was made with eyes to see,
And taste to choose fastidiously,
And ears to hear, enough of brain
To make most matters fairly plain,
Enough of health for work or play,
Of wealth enough to pick my way,
Sense to enjoy, and arts to bring
Soft nothings off a softer thing,
A turn of wit, a taste for ease,
And what had love to do with these?
I was made to revel in
The viola and violin,
The broad bassoon and clarinette,
From every art devised to get
Its complement of melody:
Believe me, I was meant to be
One who smiled back at smiling faces,
A loiterer in life's pleasant places,
A well of receptivity.
I was contrived by God to pull
The noses of the very dull;
Tweak up as 'twere a cotton gown
The law most solemnly laid down;
Expressly charged to mock the great
And weather-cockwise still girate.
To choose a rose and praise a frill,
And sometimes cause a tiny thrill,
To be a lover in my fashion—
But O! I was not made for passion.
Therefore, dear Lady, if you please
Deal very gingerly with these.
Here is our garden: O, take care
Our passion spoil not our parterre.
Be gracious, Madame, lest your frown
Should bake the lawns and burn them brown,
Be very kind, or jealous showers
May quite dash down our scented flowers,
And O! be chary of reproof,
Remember I'm not made for love.
[TO LOPOKOVA DANCING]
Is it true?
Are Ariel's whims
Embodied in your artful limbs?
And Puck, they say, betrayed you all his lore:
Did he? Are you—
As now to me at any rate you seem,
Twisting a Longhi into fun and air,—
Are you, perhaps, that unpropounded theme
Of playfulness Mozart forgot to score,
As lyrical and debonair and new
And fair?
The rhythm snaps. Surely I caught you there?
You are, at least I'm almost sure you were,
Some truant from the lesser Piero's store,
A living Procne by a livelier shore,
Where lustier satyrs ply remorselessly
More pagan antics by a bluer sea,
A sea as frankly unmysterious
As Theocritus.