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(From Stars of the Desert, 1904)
AY, smooth your hair for another lover, | |
| Refold the satin, restring the pearls, | |
| Lest those who will take my place discover | |
| Discoloured tints and dishevelled curls. | |
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| Lift up those delicate lips that mine | 5 |
| Reddened with kisses but yesterday, | |
| Let others drink the dregs of the wine | |
| We two have tasted and flung away. | |
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| I wish you well; go gather the gold, | |
| The little triumphs you hold so dear, | 10 |
| For you the pasture, the sheltered fold; | |
| Ways smoothed by custom and fenced by fear. | |
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| You could not have lived aloof, afar | |
| In golden deserts, by lonely streams, | |
| Be rich, be courted, be all you are, | 15 |
| But seek not silence, nor love nor dreams. | |
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| Yet what am I that my song should shame you, | |
| What strength have I, that I call you weak? | |
| Ah, Love alone has the right to blame you | |
| And He is a God and will not speak. | 20 |
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| One thing there is yet to be glad of; Fate | |
| In making us one has not left us three. | |
| No child shall inherit our love’s estate | |
| To be false like you or forlorn like me. | |
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| What if your sweet and treacherous eyes | 25 |
| Had smiled at me from a child of mine | |
| Your delicate lips, so apt at lies, | |
| Lived and laughed, a perpetual sign | |
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| Of fitful passion and frenzied hours | |
| That now are utterly passed away, | 30 |
| Dead and forgotten as last year’s flowers | |
| And all sweet things that have had their day. | |
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| Yet, last farewells should be gently spoken, | |
| And times of pleasure let no man grudge. | |
| Of things once loved, though his heart be broken, | 35 |
| A lover has never the right to judge. | |
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