Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/37

Louise Morey Bowman

OU care for me (oh, so tenderly), And you bring me to sit in the garden, Watching me all so anxiously,
 * And I love you and ask your pardon,

Because I can laugh no longer. But I try—oh, I try—to tell you
 * That it's really not all sad

And that here in my white, white garden
 * I am almost, almost glad!

For love (O my Lover!) is stronger Than blood and blackness and death.

He was such a glorious lover!
 * (Oh, the years of golden weather!)

And how we joyed in the colour
 * That we found in the world together:

From the tawny shades of our Eastern rugs And the gleam of our copper-lustre jugs,
 * To the rose and the green and the weird ice-blue
 * Of winter and summer and springtime hue!
 * Oh, the hyacinth-beds when the 'south-west' blew!

But love (O my Lover!) is stronger Than blood or blackness or death.

I wish I could make you understand As my Lover does in his far-off land.
 * For he knows why my flowers are all silver white;
 * He knows why the sun is like pale moonlight;

He knows why the brown and golden bees Are white, and the grass and the whispering trees.
 * Only the sky so far away
 * Grows bluer and nearer every day—

For love (O my Lover!) is stronger Than blood and blackness and death.