My mind that from youth on has gone unmated,
And then I love you for the bearing kept
In you when slight occasions something royal
Take on because you silently are there.
I know you, Lake, for a man worthy honour,
And well to honour is well to delight.
But, dear, with all this giving of my love,
Great and unmeasured giving, sending back
In joy the worship that you bring to me,
I love your glowing body, and you love mine.
No words, or thrift of philosophic thought,
Can put that love out of the love we are.
At night, alone, when the dark covers me,
I ache for you, body for body I ache.
And then I know that over you as well
The dear, forlorn, resistless pain is full.
We may persuade, virtuously persuade,
That this is but an accident of love,
Not of love's very being, a thing to bind
In brave captivity at the world's bidding,
But I know, as you know it, that persuasion
So made is outcast in the house of truth.
I love you, and the thing I love is made
All wonderful of flesh and spirit both,
Body and mind inseparably one,
And I must spend my love on all or nothing.
Should I but love those limbs so rightly planned
By ancestry so wise of English earth,
It were a simple harlotry in me.
But, Lake, to love the life and not the house,