DEFIANCE
O wide the way your beauty goes,
For all its feigned indifference,
And every folly’s path it knows,
And every humour of pretence.
But I can be as false as are
The rainbow loves which are your days,
And I will gladly go and far,
Content with your immediate praise.
Your lips, the shyer lover’s bane,
I take with disputation none,
And am your kinsman in disdain
When all is excellently done.
LOVE IN OCTOBER
The fields, the clouds, the farms and farming gear,
The drifting kine, the scarlet apple trees ...
Not of the sun but separate are these,
And individual joys, and very dear;
Yet when the sun is folded, they are here
No more, the drifting skies: the argosies
Of wagoned apples: still societies
Of elms: red cattle on the stubbled year.
So are you not love’s whole estate. I owe
In many hearts more dues than I shall pay;
Yet is your heart the spring of all love’s light,
And should your love weary of me and go
With all its thriving beams out of my day,
These many loves would founder in that night.