free-verse24 lines

Forbidden Speech

The passion you forbade my lips to utter

Will not be silenced. You must hear it in

The sullen thunders when they roll and mutter:

And when the tempest nears, with wail and din,

I know your calm forgetfulness is broken,

And to your heart you whisper, "He has spoken."

All nature understands and sympathises

With human passion. When the restless sea

Turns in its futile search for peace, and rises

To plead and to pursue, it pleads for me.

And with each desperate billow's anguished fretting.

Your heart must tell you, "He is not forgetting."

When unseen hands in lightning strokes are writing

Mysterious words upon a cloudy scroll,

Know that my pent-up passion is inditing

A cypher message for your woman's soul;

And when the lawless winds rush by you shrieking,

Let your heart say, "Now his despair is speaking."

Love comes, nor goes, at beck or call of reason,

Nor is love silent - though it says no word;

By day or night, in any clime or season,

A dominating passion must be heard.

So shall you hear, through Junes and through Decembers,

The voice of Nature saying, "He remembers."