| |
| FOREVER! ’T is a single word! | |
| Our rude forefathers deemed it two; | |
| Can you imagine so absurd | |
| A view? | |
| |
| Forever! What abysms of woe | 5 |
| The word reveals, what frenzy, what | |
| Despair! For ever (printed so) | |
| Did not. | |
| |
| It looks, ah me! how trite and tame; | |
| It fails to sadden or appall | 10 |
| Or solace—it is not the same | |
| At all. | |
| |
| O thou to whom it first occurred | |
| To solder the disjoined, and dower | |
| Thy native language with a word | 15 |
| Of power: | |
| |
| We bless thee! Whether far or near | |
| Thy dwelling, whether dark or fair | |
| Thy kingly brow, is neither here | |
| Nor there. | 20 |
| |
| But in men’s hearts shall be thy throne, | |
| While the great pulse of England beats: | |
| Thou coiner of a word unknown | |
| To Keats! | |
| |
| And nevermore must printer do | 25 |
| As men did long ago; but run | |
| “For” into “ever,” bidding two | |
| Be one. | |
| |
| Forever! passion-fraught, it throws | |
| O’er the dim page a gloom, a glamour: | 30 |
| It ’s sweet, it ’s strange; and I suppose | |
| It ’s grammar. | |
| |
| Forever! ’T is a single word! | |
| And yet our fathers deemed it two: | |
| Nor am I confident they erred;— | 35 |
| Are you? | |
| |
