LOVE'S TENDERNESS

Deem not my love is only for the bloom,

The honey and the marble, that is You;

Tis so, Belovéd, common loves consume

Their treasury, and vanish like the dew.

Nay, but my love's a thing that's far more true;

For little loves a little hour hath room,

But not for us their brief and trivial doom,

In a far richer soil our loving grew,

From deeper wells of being it upsprings;

Nor shall the wildest kiss that makes one mouth,

Draining all nectar from the flowered world,

Slake its divine unfathomable drouth;

And, when your wings against my heart lie furled,

With what a tenderness it dreams and sings!