LIEGEWOMAN
You may not wear immortal leaves
Nor yet go laurelled in your days,
But he believes
Who loves you with most intimate praise
That none on earth has ever gone,
In whom a cleanlier spirit shone.
You may be unremembered when
Our chronicles are piled in dust:
No matter than—
None ever bore a lordlier lust
To know the savour sweet or sour
Down to the dregs of every hour.
And this your epitaph shall be—
“Within life’s house her eager words
Continually
Lightened as wings of arrowy birds:
She was life’s house-fellow, she knew
The passion of him, soul and thew.”
LOVERS TO LOVERS
Our love forsworn
Was very love upon a day,
Bitterness now, forlorn,
This tattered love once went as proud a way
As any born.
You well have kept
Your love from all corrupting things,
Your house of love is swept
And bright for use; whatso each season brings
You may accept
In pride. But we?
Our date of love is dead. Our blind
Brief moment was to be
The sum, yet was it signed as yours, and signed
Indelibly.