My dear,
Please ask me not to write for you,
whether by poem or by tune.
Dare me not to write ten rhymes,
or lay them out in some design.
-
Please beg me not to draw some rune,
or recite a poem, which once I knew,
Implore me not to find a pen,
to mark upon eight lines again.
-
For poets are a lonely sort,
and words are ever love’s last resort,
But there are words, we cannot say,
which are lived once, and then away:
-
A smile, a touch, — a glance of free,
a resting of the head to sleep,
a breath drawn in, while others move,
in stillness, where, true love is proved,
-
the touching of two lovers’ hands,
the rhyming of their wedding bands.
-
As fingers rhyme when they are clasped,
so poems, when they all began,
were meant to be much more like that.
