A Few Figs from Thistles | Page 6

Desire?As you are Powerless to Elicit Pain!?(Now will the god, for blasphemy so brave,?Punish me, surely, with the shaft I crave!)
II
I think I should have loved you presently,?And given in earnest words I flung in jest;?And lifted honest eyes for you to see,?And caught your hand against my cheek and breast;?And all my pretty follies flung aside?That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,?Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,?Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.?I, that had been to you, had you remained,?But one more waking from a recurrent dream,?Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,?And walk your memory's halls, austere, supreme,?A ghost in marble of a girl you knew?Who would have loved you in a day or two.
III
Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!?Faithless am I save to love's self alone.?Were you not lovely I would leave you now;?After the feet of beauty fly my own.?Were you not still my hunger's rarest food,?And water ever to my wildest thirst,?I would desert you--think not but I would!--?And seek another as I sought you first.?But you are mobile as the veering air,?And all your charms more changeful than the tide,?Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:?I have but to continue at your side.?So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,?I am most faithless when I most am true.
IV
I shall forget you presently, my dear,?So make the most of this, your little day,?Your little month, your little half a year,?Ere I forget, or die, or move away,?And we are done forever; by and by?I shall forget you, as I said, but now,?If you entreat me with your loveliest lie?I will protest you with my favorite vow.?I would indeed that love were longer-lived,?And oaths were not so brittle as they are,?But so it is, and nature has contrived?To struggle on without a break thus far,--?Whether or not we find what we are seeking?Is idle, biologically speaking.
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