Dear heart, why will you use me so?
Dear eyes that gently me upbraid,
Still are you beautiful — - but O,
How is your beauty raimented!
Through the clear mirror of your eyes,
Through the soft sigh of kiss to kiss,
Desolate winds assail with cries The shadowy garden where love is.
And soon shall love dissolved be When over us the wild winds blow — - But you, dear love, too dear to me,
Alas! why will you use me so?
This is the 29th poem out of a set of 36 that made up Joyce's first published work (Chamber Music 1907) It was this book that got him into the Imagist Anthology and so earned him the support of Eliot and Pound who publicised his later works.
JS
