SOMETIMES when I think of love
I think of Mimi singing in Boheme,
Just as the tune across the footlights came
When we were young, my dear, at Covent Garden!
Poor music, but before the senses harden
Puccini’s made for boys and girls to wear
Spite of sham passion and a poitrinaire.
For if they looked and didn’t find the key
At least they found the hearts of you and me.
That sort of love age thinks of with a smile
How innocent it was of truth and guile,
How young perhaps and yet how half-divine
And how imperishably yours and mine.
You will not wonder nor will you reprove
My thoughts of Mimi when I think of love.
II.
SOMETIMES when I think of love
I see a boat upon a river,
And the rushes suddenly shiver,
Because of a perilous foot that treads
The reeds and the flowers into their beds.
Because of a music that shakes and begins
A different music and conscious of sins
A tune was old at the birth of the river
A tune is asleep in the blood for ever
Asleep in the blood and loving and hating
The time and the hour for which it is waiting.
Puccini yields to a sob in the throat
A hand round the heart as note answers note
With the music that wrenches and melts and grips
The hands hot on hands, the lips close on lips
Cruelly volleying clearer and stronger
Till we are a boy and a girl no longer.
And we struggle in vain as long as we can
Hating and loving and welcoming Pan,
And you are a woman and I am a man.
And you will not wonder and cannot reprove
If I hear Pan’s pipes when I think of love.
III.
SOMETIMES when I think of love
I hear a heavy voice repeat
“There’s a good doctor up the street.”
And either it seems I am hard at hearing
Or stupid perhaps or terribly fearing.
For its late of a winter night and raining
With cry of wind; or is something complaining?
One lamp in the street and a leafless tree
And a thing is moving that frightens me,
With fingers that hover about my nape
A shape like a hand and yet not a shape.
Now all that we had in the past is over
Each lover’s alone, the love from the lover.
No comforting hand for me in the gloom,
No voice of mine in the darkened room.
Where is the music and where are the songs?
For love has crept off ashamed of his wrongs.
Poor love has gone off to rail at passion,
And he will not wait for the night to fashion
Out of pain and fear and anguish and danger,
A lover strange with his love a stranger,
And yet, as they were at the opera
Incredibly close and familiar,
Incredibly close as once on the river
When each is a gift and each is a giver.
Incredibly close and all they have hoarded
Of life and of love in this moment rewarded.
Rewarded! Has love in the darkness heard
Of the little lost shadow, the small lost third?
Love is returning—to find them alone,
And if love be a sinner, who casts a stone?
Shattered and beaten and blindingly sure
Of love and themselves and strong to endure
He finds them, by pain more lastingly crowned
Than ever by joy and by laughter were bound
Happier lovers and lovers untaunted
By the shameful cries these lovers have haunted.
If this be their love, who out of the pit
Being a devil challenges it?
In heaven assayed, in hell-fire priced
Who casts the first stone? Not I, says Christ.
You will not wonder nor will you reprove
If I think of this, when I think of love.
IV.
SOMETIMES when I think of love
I remember how you stooped down from heaven,
Because they had told you I was unforgiven,
To take half of the storm, and share the stripe
An angel in hell with her guttersnipe.
I am thinking then of your lighted face
And your hands and the way your fingers lace
As you sit quietly reading a book.
Perhaps I move and you suddenly look
Across the room and the soul in your eyes
Is bright as it looks with the old surprise
Changing for ever, for ever the same
And you break my heart as you speak my name.
You must not wonder, you will not reprove
If sometimes I dare not think of love.
OLD.
SO old, so changed, and odd
Even as God,
I am, so odd and old,
That I am bitter cold
In heart and limb
Like him.
I might in heaven be,
Even as He.
So lonely and so rare
Beyond the utmost prayer
My spirit weighs,
Dead days.