Page:Poems and ballads (IA poemsballads00swinrich).pdf/65

 Save dust and laurels and gold and sand? Which gifts are goodly; but I will none.

O all fair lovers about the world, There is none of you, none, that shall comfort me. My thoughts are as dead things, wrecked and whirled Round and round in a gulf of the sea; And still, through the sound and the straining stream, Through the coil and chafe, they gleam in a dream, The bright fine lips so cruelly curled, And strange swift eyes where the soul sits free.

Free, without pity, withheld from woe, Ignorant; fair as the eyes are fair. Would I have you change now, change at a blow, Startled and stricken, awake and aware? Yea, if I could, would I have you see My very love of you filling me, And know my soul to the quick, as I know The likeness and look of your throat and hair?

I shall not change you. Nay, though I might, Would I change my sweet one love with a word? I had rather your hair should change in a night, Clear now as the plume of a black bright bird; Your face fail suddenly, cease, turn grey, Die as a leaf that dies in a day. I will keep my soul in a place out of sight, Far off, where the pulse of it is not heard.