In Love For Long

I've been in love for long

With what I cannot tell

And will contrive a song

For the intangible

That has no mould or shape,

From which there's no escape.

It is not even a name,

Yet is all constancy;

Tried or untried, the same,

It cannot part from me;

A breath, yet as still

As the established hill.

It is not any thing,

And yet all being is;

Being, being, being,

Its burden and its bliss.

How can I ever prove

What it is I love?

This happy happy love

Is sieged with crying sorrows,

Crushed beneath and above

Between todays and morrows;

A little paradise

Held in the world's vice.

And there it is content

And careless as a child,

And in imprisonment

Flourishes sweet and wild;

In wrong, beyond wrong,

All the world's day long.

This love a moment known

For what I do not know

And in a moment gone

Is like the happy doe

That keeps its perfect laws

Between the tiger's paws

And vindicates its cause.