Francis Thompson

I fear to love thee,
Sweet, because Love's the ambassador of loss;
White flake of childhood, clinging so To my soiled raiment, thy shy snow At tenderest touch will shrink and go
Love me not, delightful child

Here I make oath--Although the heart that knows its
Hear loath,
And credit less--That he who kens to meet Pain's kisses
Which hiss against his tears,

I    Secret was the garden;    Set i' the pathless awe    Where no star its breath can draw
Life, that is its warden,
Sits behind the fosse of death
Mine eyes saw not,      and I saw

The heart you hold too small and local thing,
Such spacious terms of edifice to bear
And yet, since Poesy first shook out her wing,
The mighty Love has been impalaced there;

The after-even
Ah, did I walk,  Indeed, in her or even
For nothing of me or around  But absent She did leaven,
Felt in my body as its soul,  And in my soul its heaven

The wailful sweetness of the violin Floats down the hush-ed waters of the wind,
The heart-strings of the throbbing harp begin To long in aching music
Spirit-pined,
In wafts that poignant sweetness drifts, until The wounded soul ooze...

I do not need the skies' Pomp, when I would be wise; For pleasaunce nor to use Heaven's champaign when I muse
One grass-blade in its veins Wisdom's whole flood contains; Thereon my foundering mind Odyssean fate can find
O little blade, n...