118
DOUBLE QUATRAINS.
If I should cease to answer love or wit:
Blind, deaf, or dumb, how bitter each must be!
Blind, deaf, or dumb—I will not think of it!
. . . Yet the night comes when I shall be all three.
Blind, deaf, or dumb, how bitter each must be!
Blind, deaf, or dumb—I will not think of it!
. . . Yet the night comes when I shall be all three.
V.
THE HAPPIER GIFT.
Divinest words that ever singer said
Would hardly lend your mouth a sweeter red;
Her aureole, even hers whose book you hold,
Could give your head no goldener charm of gold.
Would hardly lend your mouth a sweeter red;
Her aureole, even hers whose book you hold,
Could give your head no goldener charm of gold.
Ah me! you have the only gift on earth
That to a woman can be surely worth
Breathing the breath of life for. Keep your place
Even she had given her fame to have your face.
That to a woman can be surely worth
Breathing the breath of life for. Keep your place
Even she had given her fame to have your face.
VI.
IN DOUBT.
Through dream and dusk a frightened whisper said:
"Lay down the world: the one you love is dead."
In the near waters, without any cry
I sank, therefore—glad, oh so glad, to die!
"Lay down the world: the one you love is dead."
In the near waters, without any cry
I sank, therefore—glad, oh so glad, to die!
