| T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22. | | | Sonnets to Aurelia
XIX. “Come, let us sigh a requiem over love” | | By Robert Nichols (1893–1944) |
| | (From Aurelia & Other Poems, 1920) |
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COME, let us sigh a requiem over love | |
| That we ourselves have slain in love’s own bed, | |
| Whose hearts that had courage to drink enough | |
| Lacked courage to forbid the taste they bred, | |
| Which body captained soon, till, in disgust, | 5 |
| These very hearts of bodily surfeit died, | |
| Poisoned by that sweet overflow of lust | |
| Whose past delight our substance deified. | |
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| No courage, no, nor pleasure have we now, | |
| To our own frantic bodies are we tossed, | 10 |
| Only sometimes exhaustion will allow | |
| Us peace to observe the image of love’s ghost, | |
| With torturing voice and with hid face return | |
| Faintly, as even now, to bid us mourn. | | | |
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