Love’s Almsman Plaineth His Fare
O YOU, love’s mendicancy who never tried,How little of your almsman me you know!Your little languid hand in mine you slide,Like to a child says—‘Kiss me and let me go!’And night for this is fretted with my tears,While I:—‘How soon this heavenly neck doth tireBending to me from its transtellar spheres!’Ah, heart all kneaded out of honey and fire!Who bound thee to a body nothing worth,And shamed thee much with an unlovely soul,That the most strainedest charity of earthDistasteth soon to render back the wholeOf thine inflamèd sweets and gentilesse!Whereat, like an unpastured Titan, thouGnaw’st on thyself for famine’s bitterness,And leap’st against thy chain. Sweet Lady, howLittle a linking of the hand to you!Though I should touch yours careless for a year,Not one blue vein would lie divinelier blueUpon your fragile temple, to unsphereThe seraphim for kisses! Not one curveOf your sad mouth would droop more sad and sweet.But little food love’s beggars needs must serve,That eye your plenteous graces from the street.A hand-clasp I must feed on for a night,A noon, although the untasted feast you lay,To mock me, of your beauty. That you mightBe lover for one space, and make essayWhat ’tis to pass unsuppered to your couch,Keep fast from love all day; and so be taughtThe famine which these craving lines avouch!Ah! miser of good things that cost thee naught,How know’st thou poor men’s hunger?—Misery!When I go doleless and unfed by thee!