Like colours in the sea, like flowers, Like a cat's splendid circled eyes That wax and wane with love for hours, Green as green flame, blue-grey like skies, And soft like sighs-- And all these only like your name, And your name full of all of these. I say it, and it sounds the same-- Save that I say it now at ease, Your name, Félise. I said "she must be swift and white, And subtly warm, and half perverse, And sweet like sharp soft fruit to bite, And like a snake's love lithe and fierce." Men have guessed worse. What was the song I made of you Here where the grass forgets our feet As afternoon forgets the dew? Ah that such sweet things should be fleet, Such fleet things sweet! As afternoon forgets the dew, As time in time forgets all men, As our old place forgets us two, Who might have turned to one thing then But not again. O lips that mine have grown into Like April's kissing May, O fervent eyelids letting through Those eyes the greenest of things blue, The bluest of things grey, If you were I and I were you, How could I love you, say? How could the roseleaf love the rue, The day love nightfall and her dew, Though night may love the day? You loved it may be more than I; We know not; love is hard to seize. And all things are not good to try; And lifelong loves the worst of these For us, Félise. Ah, take the season and have done, Love well the hour and let it go: Two souls may sleep and wake up one, Or dream they wake and find it so, And then--you know. Kiss me once hard as though a flame Lay on my lips and made them fire; The same lips now, and not the same; What breath shall fill and re-inspire A dead desire? The old song sounds hollower in mine ear Than thin keen sounds of dead men's speech-- A noise one hears and would not hear; Too strong to die, too weak to reach From wave to beach. We stand on either side the sea, Stretch hands, blow kisses, laugh and lean I toward you, you toward me; But what hears either save the keen Grey sea between? A year divides us, love from love, Though you love now, though I loved then. The gulf is strait, but deep enough; Who shall recross, who among men Shall cross again? Love was a jest last year, you said, And what lives surely, surely dies. Even so; but now that love is dead, Shall love rekindle from wet eyes, From subtle sighs? For many loves are good to see; Mutable loves, and loves perverse; But there is nothing, nor shall be, So sweet, so wicked, but my verse Can dream of worse. For we that sing and you that love Know that which man may, only we. The rest live under us; above, Live the great gods in heaven, and see What things shall be.