• I stood where Love in brimming armfuls bore
• Slight wanton flowers and foolish toys of fruit:
• And round him ladies thronged in warm pursuit,
• Fingered and lipped and proffered the strange store.
• And from one hand the petal and the core
• Savoured of sleep; and cluster and curled shoot
• Seemed from another hand like shame's salute,—
• Gifts that I felt my cheek was blushing for.

• At last Love bade my Lady give the same:
• 10 And as I looked, the dew was light thereon;
• And as I took them, at her touch they shone
• With inmost heaven-hue of the heart of flame.
• And then Love said: “Lo! when the hand is hers,
• Follies of love are love's true ministers.”

   

• Even as a child, of sorrow that we give
• The dead, but little in his heart can find,
• Since without need of thought to his clear mind
• Their turn it is to die and his to live:—
• Even so the winged New Love smiles to receive
• Along his eddying wings plumes the auroral wind,
• Nor, forward glorying, casts one look behind
• Where night-rack shrouds the Old Love fugitive.

• There is a change in every hour's recall,
• 10 And the last cowslip in the fields we see
• On the same day with the first corn-poppy.
• Alas for hourly change! Alas for all
• The loves that from his hand proud Youth lets fall,
• Even as the beads of a told rosary!