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Christina Georgina Rossetti - Light Love
Work rating: Low

`Oh, sad thy lot before I came,
  But sadder when I go;
My presence but a flash of flame,
  A transitory glow
  Between two barren wastes like snow.
What wilt thou do when I am gone,
  Where wilt thou rest, my dear?
For cold thy bed to rest upon,
  And cold the falling year
  Whose withered leaves are lost and sere.` 

She hushed the baby at her breast,
  She rocked it on her knee:
`And I will rest my lonely rest,
  Warmed with the thought of thee,
  Rest lulled to rest by memory.`
She hushed the baby with her kiss,
  She hushed it with her breast:
`Is death so sadder much than this—
  Sure death that builds a nest
  For those who elsewhere cannot rest?` 

`Oh, sad thy note, my mateless dove,
  With tender nestling cold;
But hast thou ne`er another love
  Left from the days of old,
  To build thy nest of silk and gold,
To warm thy paleness to a blush
  When I am far away—
To warm thy coldness to a flush,
  And turn thee back to May,
  And turn thy twilight back to day?` 

She did not answer him again,
  But leaned her face aside,
Weary with the pang of shame and pain,
  And sore with wounded pride:
  He knew his very soul had lied.
She strained his baby in her arms,
  His baby to her heart:
`Even let it go, the love that harms:
  We twain will never part;
  Mine own, his own, how dear thou art.` 

`Now never teaze me, tender-eyed,
  Sigh-voiced,` he said in scorn:
`For nigh at hand there blooms a bride,
  My bride before the morn;
  Ripe-blooming she, as thou forlorn.
Ripe-blooming she, my rose, my peach;
  She woos me day and night:
I watch her tremble in my reach;
  She reddens, my delight,
  She ripens, reddens in my sight.` 

`And is she like a sunlit rose?
  Am I like withered leaves?
Haste where thy spiced garden blows:
  But in bare Autumn eves
  Wilt thou have store of harvest sheaves?
Thou leavest love, true love behind,
  To seek a love as true;
Go, seek in haste: but wilt thou find?
  Change new again for new;
  Pluck up, enjoy—yea, trample too. 

`Alas for her, poor faded rose,
  Alas for her her, like me,
Cast down and trampled in the snows.`
  `Like thee? nay, not like thee:
  She leans, but from a guarded tree.
Farewell, and dream as long ago,
  Before we ever met:
Farewell; my swift-paced horse seems slow.`
  She raised her eyes, not wet
  But hard, to Heaven: `Does God forget?`
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