Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault
Was, had I not been made of common clay
I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed
Yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day

From the wildness of my wasted passion I had
Struck a better, clearer song
Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled
With some Hydra-headed wrong

Had my lips been smitten into music by the
Kisses that but made them bleed
You had walked with Bice and the angels on
That verdant and enamelled mead

I had trod the road which Dante treading saw
The suns of seven circles shine
Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening
As they opened to the Florentine

And the mighty nations would have crowned
Me, who am crownless now and without name
And some orient dawn had found me kneeling
On the threshold of the House of Fame

I had sat within that marble circle where the
Oldest bard is as the young
And the pipe is ever dropping honey, and the
Lyre's strings are ever strung
Keats had lifted up his hymeneal curls from out
The poppy-seeded wine
With ambrosial mouth had kissed my forehead
Clasped the hand of noble love in mine

And at springtide, when the apple-blossoms
Brush the burnished bosom of the dove
Two young lovers lying in an orchard would
Have read the story of our love;

Would have read the legend of my passion
Known the bitter secret of my heart
Kissed as we have kissed, but never parted as
We two are fated now to part

For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by
The cankerworm of truth
And no hand can gather up the fallen withered
Petals of the rose of youth

Yet I am not sorry that I loved you - ah!
What else had I a boy to do, -
For the hungry teeth of time devour, and the
Silent-footed years pursue

Rudderless, we drift athwart a tempest, and
When once the storm of youth is past
Without lyre, without lute or chorus, Death
The silent pilot comes at last
And within the grave there is no pleasure
For the blindworm battens on the root
And Desire shudders into ashes, and the tree
Of Passion bears no fruit

Ah! what else had I to do but love you?
God's own mother was less dear to me
And less dear the Cytheraean rising like an
Argent lily from the sea

I have made my choice, have lived my
Poems, and, though youth is gone in wasted days
I have found the lover's crown of myrtle better
Than the poet's crown of bays