Disillusionment and Lost Love

Love’s stricken “why” Is all that love can speak— Built of but just a syllable The hugest hearts that break.

I cannot live with You— It would be Life— And Life is over there— Behind the Shelf.

What is that sad, dark island?—It is Cythera, They tell us, a country famous in song, Banal Eldorado of all the old bachelors. Look! after all, it is a poor land! 8

So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn Which once he wore! The glory from his gray hairs gone Forevermore!

I will not mourn, although my heart is torn, Oh, love forever lost! I will not mourn.

Love in a hut, with water and a crust, Is—Love, forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust.

When the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies dead— When the cloud is scattered The rainbow’s glory is shed.

One word is too often profaned For me to profane it, One feeling too falsely disdained For thee to disdain it.

Is always so to women; one sole bond Awaits them, treachery is all their trust; Taught to conceal, their bursting hearts despond Over their idol, till some wealthier lust Buys them in marriage—and what rests beyond? A thankless husband, next a faithless lover, Then dressing, nursing, praying, and all’s over.

There’s not a joy the world can give like that it takes away, When the glow of early thought declines in feeling’s dull decay.

Alas! our young affections run to waste, Or water but the desert.

I have not loved the world, nor the world me; I have not flatter’d its rank breath, nor bow’d To its idolatries a patient knee.

Like to the apples on the Dead Sea’s shore, All ashes to the taste.

I only know we loved in vain; I only feel—farewell! farewell!

Like Dead Sea fruits, that tempt the eye, But turn to ashes on the lips.

Oh! ever thus, from childhood’s hour, I’ve seen my fondest hope decay; I never loved a tree or flower, But ’twas the first to fade away. I never nurs’d a dear gazelle To glad me with its soft black eye, But when it came to know me well, And love me, it was sure to die.

Oft in the stilly night, Ere Slumber’s chain has bound me, Fond Memory brings the light Of other days around me; The words of love then spoken; The cheerful hearts now broken.

The youth, who daily farther from the east At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.

Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore— The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

But to see her was to love her, Love but her, and love forever. Had we never lov’d sae kindly, Had we never lov’d sae blindly, Never met—or never parted— We had ne’er been brokenhearted.

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever; Ae farewell and then forever!

And here, poor fool! with all my lore I stand! no wiser than before. 10

“Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed” was the ninth beatitude.