To One Who Would Make A Confession

Oh! leave the past to buy its own dead.

The past is naught to us, the present all.

What need of last year's leaves to strew Love's bed?

What need of ghosts to grace a festival?

I would not, if I could, those days recall,

Those days not ours.

For us the feast is spread.

The lamps are lit, and music plays withal.

Then let us love and leave the rest unsaid.

This island is our home.

Around it

Great gulfs and oceans, channels, straits and seas.

What matter in what wreck we reached the shore,

So we both reached it?

We can mock at these.

Oh! leave the past, if past indeed there be;

I would not know it;

I would know but thee.