free-verse44 lines
The Year of Love
by Algernon Charles SwinburneThere were four loves that one by one,
Following the seasons and the sun,
Passed over without tears, and fell
Away without farewell.
The first was made of gold and tears,
The next of aspen-leaves and fears,
The third of rose-boughs and rose-roots,
The last love of strange fruits.
These were the four loves faded. Hold
Some minutes fast the time of gold
When our lips each way clung and clove
To a face full of love.
The tears inside our eyelids met,
Wrung forth with kissing, and wept wet
The faces cleaving each to each
Where the blood served for speech.
The second, with low patient brows
Bound under aspen-coloured boughs
And eyes made strong and grave with sleep
And yet too weak to weep
The third, with eager mouth at ease
Fed from late autumn honey, lees
Of scarce gold left in latter cells
With scattered flower-smells
Hair sprinkled over with spoilt sweet
Of ruined roses, wrists and feet
Slight-swathed, as grassy-girdled sheaves
Hold in stray poppy-leaves
The fourth, with lips whereon has bled
Some great pale fruit's slow colour, shed
From the rank bitten husk whence drips
Faint blood between her lips
Made of the heat of whole great Junes
Burning the blue dark round their moons
(Each like a mown red marigold)
So hard the flame keeps hold
These are burnt thoroughly away.
Only the first holds out a day
Beyond these latter loves that were
Made of mere heat and air.
And now the time is winterly
The first love fades too: none will see,
When April warms the world anew,
The place wherein love grew.