Page:Hephaestus, Persephone at Enna, and Sappho in Leucadia.djvu/37


 * I loved you then, and love you now.
 * The torn plumes of the wayward wings I take,
 * The ruined rose, and all the empty cruse;
 * Here I accept the bitter with the sweet,
 * The autumnal sorrow with the autumnal gold;
 * Tears shall go unregretted, and much pain
 * Gladly I take, if grief, in truth, and you
 * Go hand in hand.


 * Ask me no more! For good
 * Were life, indeed, if every lonely bough
 * Could lure again the migrant nightingale!
 * —If all that luting music of first love
 * Could be recalled down years grown desolate!
 * Lightly they sing who love and are beloved;
 * And men shall lightly listen; but the heart
 * Forlorn of hope, that hides its wound in song,
 * Remembered is through many years and lands.
 * And I have wept and sung, and I have known
 * So many hours of sorrow—all for you!


 * What Love remembers little things?—what wave
 * Withholds itself for sighs of broken reeds?


 * The wave remembers not, till reed by reed
 * The lyric shores of youth lie ruinous;
 * It was not much I asked in those old days;—
 * As waters come whence reeds may never see,