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Arthur Symons - An Epilogue To Love
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I 
Love now, my heart, there is but now to love; 
Seek nothing more, but let it be enough 
That one desire, one moment, melts in yours. 
Hold the one moment fast; nothing endures, 
And, as the past was, shall the future be; 
O heart, hold fast the present. Then to me 
My heart: What is the present? There is none. 
Has not the sigh after the kiss begun 
The future? and the past was in the kiss. 
Then to my heart I said: O heart, if this 
Be life, then what is love? And my heart said: 
Desire of things unborn or things long dead. 
 

II 
I who have dreamed of happiness now dream 
Of happiness no more. If the extreme 
Desire of you leave over some poor space 
To fold my pain into a happy place, 
I am content; if not, I am content. 
Not for my peace, not for my pleasure sent, 
Who have no test nor any hope to bring, 
O you, of whom I know not anything, 
But that you hold me and I hold you not, 
And that for you, in vain, I have forgot 
The world: in vain: you are the world; I take 
My foe into my keeping for your sake. 
I who have dreamed of love now dream no more 
Of love. It was a dream I dreamed before 
I knew you. Now I know that when I fold 
My arms about you in that hour I hold 
A thing made wonderful with flesh and blood; 
No more. I am content. It is not good 
That men should dream by daylight: let them keep 
Dreams for the kind forgetfulness of sleep. 
Clip the soul`s wings, hold down the heart, forget: 
Yes, without dreams, I may be happy yet. 
 

III 
Come into the dim forest of old sleep; 
Wander with me, and I will lead you deep 
Through paths of sun-warmed grasses and chill ferns, 
Into the shadow where a green flame burns. 
Hark! the swift rustle, wings among the leaves, 
The curve of a dark sudden flight, that leaves 
A quiver in the branches; dusky throats 
Sob happily, a ripple of soft notes 
Begins to soothe the silence back again. 
But listen, for the tiny voice of rain 
Whimpers among the pattering leaves; they cry 
With easy, shining tears, the sun will dry 
Off their sleek faces; and the earth breathes in 
The breath of rain, and nimble winds begin 
To shake the hoarded odours of the wood 
Out like a spendthrift; and the air is good, 
And kind, and sleepy. Cannot you and I 
Forget to not be friends? This is July. 


IV 
I have loved life for other women`s sake, 
And now for your sake fear it. Can I slake 
A thirst: the whole world cannot satisfy? 
All that I have I give, but what am I? 
You have desired, you have desired in vain, 
Such immortality of joy and pain 
As mortal hours know nought of; you have sought 
The spirit of life in all things; sense and thought 
Strain after sharp delight, or drowse upon 
The swift and sky-enfolding pinion 
Of joy that flies in dreams between the stars. 
You have loved knowledge, for that hand unbars 
The gates of closed and waiting Edens; praise, 
For the delicious trouble in the gaze 
Of the flushed praiser; power, because power gives 
Life to your life, telling you that it lives. 
You have loved love, but not for love`s sake, nay, 
Loved to be loved; I, loving you to-day, 
Know that you love my love, not me; I bring 
A multitude of loves for offering, 
All I have learnt in tears and ecstasies, 
All my life loving: yet, shall this suffice? 
Life cries at all your senses, calling you 
With many voices: how shall you be true 
To your own self if you are true to me? 
You have loved love, you have loved liberty, 
And not to love; think, do you gain or lose 
By choosing bondage? love is bondage: choose! 


V 
You speak to me as to an enemy. 
And your warm eyes are cold only to me, 
And your kind lips, that smile on all, grow stern 
Only to me, and if by chance you turn 
To where I sit and see you and are dumb, 
A deep and friendless silence seems to come 
Between us like a shadow, and you look 
Into my face as into some old book. 
Yet will a stillness deeper than delight, 
The happy pain of joy grown infinite, 
Knowing itself no more but as some pain 
Too intimate for pleasure, softly rain 
Into your soul like morning, if I take 
Your hand in mine; and suddenly you awake, 
Out of a loneliness grown dear and strange, 
And your deep quiet breathing seems to change, 
Like the still water when it feels the wind; 
And, as earth thrills when night`s last clouds are thinned, 
A slow new wonder dawns into your face. 
And little sighs breathe for a little space 
Out of your breast like little smiles of sound, 
Because, after the waiting, we have found 
Each other; and if this be love, I know 
No more than you; yet, if it be not so, 
There is a good thing in the world, above 
The best that I have ever dreamed of love. 


VI 
I have not loved love, nor sought happiness, 
I have loved every passionate distress, 
And the adoration of sharp fear, and hate 
For love`s sake, and what agonies await 
The unassuaged fulfilment of desire 
Not eased in the having; I have sought to tire 
The fretting of the flesh grown sad with thought, 
And restless with remembering; I have sought 
Forgetfulness, and rest, and liberty, 
And bondage. And all these have come to me, 
And all these I have suffered, and all these 
Have brought no joy, and left me little ease. 
Passionate and untender, I need words 
Hard as bright jewels, bright and swift as birds, 
If I but name you, miracle in flesh; 
O cool, for the cool winds are not more fresh, 
Blowing from the sea at twilight; flame of the deep 
Roots of the earth, and sleepy with the sleep 
Rustling in leafy trees and murmuring 
In moonlight-shadowed woods when no birds sing; 
Young every day, forgetting by the way 
Yesterday`s memories with yesterday, 
So making the world new again, and then 
Forgetting, and so making it again. 
Make a new world for me, or let me come 
Into your world, and let it be a home 
For my unrest, liberty from my dreams, 
A place of winds and sunlight and cool streams 
For my tired thought to drowse in. But no love, 
No love! Earth`s loveliest paradise would prove 
The Eden of the snake and that wise tree 
Whose wisdom was our loss of liberty, 
If love, a bitterer wisdom, spoilt the taste 
Of every tree that God the gardener placed 
About our path in the garden, saving one. 
Make a new world for me; I need the sun, 
The sap of the earth, the deep breath of the wind, 
The voices of the sea: these have not sinned, 
Nor known mortality; and these to you 
Are of your blood: I would inherit too 
That kingdom, liberal of its delight, 
Unageing. I would love the day and night, 
As you do; I would love for its own sake 
Beauty no longer with the jealous ache 
Of old desire, but freely as the air, 
That breathes about all beauty everywhere. 
Only, no love, not that sweet poison, brewed 
From hemlock roots of kindness, that has strewed 
The world with death, since, on Troy`s “topless towers,”
Helen with deathless hands put back the hours. 
I have not loved love; let me be; O give 
Not love, but life: I would not love, but live! 


VII 
Your eyes are empty streets where men have passed. 
I search in vain: there is no shadow cast 
Upon their silence; yet a stealthy thing 
Lurks in my heart watching and listening. 
What do I seek? what is there I should find? 
Only a little dust upon the wind, 
Where many feet have trodden: let me give 
Dreams to the night, and be content to live! 
O, when you droop into my arms, and die 
Into delight as into sleep, and lie 
Enfolded deeper than a dream in sleep, 
Smiling with little sleepy smiles, that creep 
About the corners of your mouth, and stir 
Your waking eyelids like a messenger, 
Warm from the heart; when I have seen your soul 
Swoon to intense oblivion, and your whole 
Body, forgotten of the soul, lie weak 
And fluttering, and have feared to touch your cheek 
Lest you should fade into a vaporous wreath; 
When I have seen the soul come back, and breathe 
A mortal air, and with a wild surprise; 
Endured the awful questioning of eyes 
Awakened out of hell or heaven, and bowed 
My head in an exultant silence, loud 
With triumphing voices out of hell or heaven; 
O my desire, I have beheld the seven 
Heavens opened, and forgotten if time be; 
I have been drunken with an ecstasy 
Older than time; then, then that stealthy thing, 
Coiled in my heart, begins awakening 
The ignoble voices, and I listen: why? 
Why? because you are you, and I am I. 


VIII 
Why do I fear your past as if it stole 
Some peace from the possession of my soul? 
Is not to-day enough? No, not enough. 
You love me: can I ask for more than love? 
Yes, more than love. What then? The past. The past 
Is dead, but we, who live, have met at last; 
I have forgotten all the rest; forget, 
And let our lives begin the day we met. 
No: I remember. And if so? I take 
Your past with you, in silence, for your sake; 
Love as I love, take mine, be satisfied. 
But you have loved? I dreamed, and all dreams died. 
I would know all. Why, then, this vanity 
To count the dead and say, these died for me? 
No, not for me: they passed, they had their day, 
Cried at your heart, were welcomed, went their way; 
Forgotten? but their names, scrawled over, ret 
Inscribed on your heart`s liberal palimpsest; 
I read the names there still. So do not I; 
I read your eyes, that hate me, doubt me: why? 
Are not my arms around you, and my heart 
Warm to your hand, and are we not apart, 
Exiles of love, in a kind banishment? 
Am I not yours, and am I not content? 
I have given you all I have; can I unlive 
My life, or is there more that I can give? 
I take you: will you still not take me? still 
You ask, refuse, withhold? Yes. As you will!
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