The Broken Wing/The Silence of Love

​2. The Silence of Love

Since thus I have endowed you with the whole
Joy of my flesh and treasure of my soul,
And your life debt to me looms so supreme,
Shall my love wax ungenerous as to seem
By sign or supplication to demand
An answering gift from your reluctant hand?

Give what you will . . . if aught be yours to give!
But tho' you are the breath by which I live
And all my days are a consuming pyre
Of unaccomplished longing and desire,
How shall my love beseech you or beset
Your heart with sad remembrance and regret?

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Quenched are the fervent words I yearn to speak,
And tho' I die, how shall I claim or seek
From your full rivers one reviving shower,
From your resplendent years one single hour?
Still for Love's sake I am foredoomed to bear
A load of passionate silence and despair.

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