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SO SWEET LOVE SEEMED (1894)

So sweet love seemed that April morn, When first we kissed beside the thorn, So strangely sweet, it was not strange We thought that love could never change.

But I can tell let truth be told That love will change in growing old; Though day by day is nought to see, So delicate his motions be.

And in the end 'twill come to pass
Quite to forget what once he was,
Nor even in fancy to recall
The pleasure that was all in all.

His little spring, that sweet we found,
So deep in summer floods is drowned,
I wonder, bathed in joy complete,
How love so young could be so sweet.

MELANCHOLIA (1904)

5

10

15

The sickness of desire, that in dark days
Looks on the imagination of despair,
Forgetteth man, and stinteth God his
praise;

Nor but in sleep findeth a cure for care.
Incertainty that once gave scope to dream
Of laughing enterprise and glory untold, 61
Is now a blackness that no stars redeem,
A wall of terror in a night of cold.
Fool! thou that hast impossibly desired
And now impatiently despairest, - see 10
How nought is changed: Joy's wisdom is
attired

Splendid for others' eyes if not for thee:
Not love or beauty or youth from earth is

fled;

If they delight thee not, 'tis thou art dead.

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But is there anything Beyond?

This life cannot be All, they swear,
For how unpleasant, if it were!
One may not doubt that, somehow, Good
Shall come of Water and of Mud;
And, sure, the reverent eye must see
A Purpose in 'Liquidity.

5

10

We darkly know, by Faith we cry,
The future is not Wholly Dry.
Mud unto mud! - Death eddies near - 15
Not here the appointed End, not here!
But somewhere, beyond Space and Time,
Is wetter water, slimier slime!

And there (they trust) there swimmeth
One

Who swam ere rivers were begun,
Immense, of fishy form and mind,
Squamous, omnipotent, and kind;
And under that Almighty Fin,
The littlest fish may enter in.

Oh! never fly conceals a hook,

Fish say, in the Eternal Brook;

20

25

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Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways

to roam,

A body of England's, breathing English

air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of

home. And think,

away,

this heart, all evil shed

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less 10 Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

And, flinging off youth's happy promise, flies

5

Up to some breach, despising earthly things,

And, in contempt of hell and heaven, dies, Rather than bear some yoke of priests or kings.

In hearts at peace, under an English Our joys are not of heaven nor earth, but heaven.

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