Passion is spent, and nothing was it spent on,
And grief run dry of having no wounds to cure,
And discontent that was the staff I leant on
Is stifled by its final panting breaths.
I have only patience left: such patience, sure,
Is not life’s child and mine, but mine and death’s.
XVII.
MY little dream, my momentary dream,
My illimitable dream has slipt away.
It came not like the morning, but the gleam
In morning’s van that is not night or day.
But since my walls of ignorance are broken,
Though on that desert knowledge builds no towers,
I cannot say of life, he has not spoken,
I cannot say of love, he has no powers.
I have seen apparitions. I have heard
Rumours within my soul’s profoundest cave.
Movements remote and mighty have been stirred
In my ancestral blood, while from the grave
And womb of time strange thunders did arise
That shook the throne of thought with prophecies.
XVIII.
SHALL we not laugh together, you and I,
I being at last fulfilled, at last at rest
Within the strength of your beloved breast,
Shall we not laugh once at a day gone by
When, wan as things that lie below the earth,
Things choked and buried, sunless and unsought,
This richest life was only lived in thought,
Seed without fruit, unconsummated birth?
Love, in that time when you have called me yours
And have with kisses long outbreathed old fears,
Love, let me not remember these! these hours,
Save with one smile to drown their thousand tears.
Then fold me in your bosom so deep away
That memory cannot touch this loveless day.