There I stood, holding her farewell hand, (Pressing my life and soul and all The world to one good-bye, till, small And smaller pressed, why there I'd stand Dead when they vanished with the sight of her). And I saw that she had grown aware, Queer puzzled face! of other things Beyond the present and her own young speed, Of yesterday and what new days might breed Monstrously when the future brings A charger with your late-lamented head: Aware of other people's lives and will, Aware, perhaps, aware even of me ... The joyous hope of it! But still I pitied her; for it was sad to see A goddess shorn of her divinity. In the midst of her speed she had made pause, And doubts with all their threat of claws, Outstripped till now by her unconsciousness, Had seized on her; she was proved mortal now. "Live, only live! For you were meant Never to know a thought's distress, But a long glad astonishment At the world's beauty and your own. The pity of you, goddess, grown Perplexed and mortal." Yet ... yet ... can it be That she is aware, perhaps, even of me? And life recedes, recedes; the curve is bare, My handkerchief flutters blankly in the air; And the question rumbles in the void: Was she aware, was she after all aware? LOVE SONG Dear absurd child--too dear to my cost I've found-- God made your soul for pleasure, not for use: It cleaves no way, but angled broad obtuse, Impinges with a slabby-bellied sound Full upon life, and on the rind of things Rubs its sleek self and utters purr and snore And all the gamut of satisfied murmurings, Content with that, nor wishes anything more. A happy infant, daubed to the eyes in juice Of peaches that flush bloody at the core, Naked you bask upon a south-sea shore, While o'er your tumbling bosom the hair floats loose. The wild flowers bloom and die; the heavens go round With the song of wheeling planetary rings: You wriggle in the sun; each moment brings Its freight for you; in all things pleasures abound. You taste and smile, then this for the next pass over; And there's no future for you and no past, And when, absurdly, death arrives at last, 'Twill please you awhile to kiss your latest lover. PRIVATE PROPERTY All fly--yet who is misanthrope?-- The actual men and things that pass Jostling, to wither as the grass So soon: and (be it heaven's hope, Or poetry's kaleidoscope, Or love or wine, at feast, at mass) Each owns a paradise of glass Where never a yearning heliotrope Pursues the sun's ascent or slope; For the sun dreams there, and no time is or was.