Love and Scorn

I.     Love, loyallest and lordliest born of things,     Immortal that shouldst be, though all else end,     In plighted hearts of fearless friend with friend,     Whose hand may curb or clip thy plume-plucked wings?     Not griefs nor times: though these be lords and kings     Crowned, and their yoke bid vassal passions bend,     They may not pierce the spirit of sense, or blend     Quick poison with the souls live watersprings.     The true clear heart whose core is manful trust     Fears not that very death may turn to dust     Love lit therein as toward a brother born,     If one touch make not all its fine gold rust,     If one breath blight not all its glad ripe corn,     And all its fire be turned to fire of scorn. II.     Scorn only, scorn begot of bitter proof     By keen experience of a trustless heart,     Bears burning in her new-born hand the dart     Wherewith love dies heart-stricken, and the roof     Falls of his palace, and the storied woof     Long woven of many a year with lifes whole art     Is rent like any rotten weed apart,     And hardly with reluctant eyes aloof     Cold memory guards one relic scarce exempt     Yet from the fierce corrosion of contempt,     And hardly saved by pity. Woe are we     That once we loved, and love not; but we know     The ghost of love, surviving yet in show,     Where scorn has passed, is vain as grief must be. III.     O sacred, just, inevitable scorn,     Strong child of righteous judgment, whom with grief     The rent heart bears, and wins not yet relief,     Seeing of its pain so dire a portent born,     Must thou not spare one sheaf of all the corn,     One doit of all the treasure? not one sheaf,     Not one poor doit of all? not one dead leaf     Of all that fell and left behind a thorn?     Is man so strong that one should scorn another?     Is any as God, not made of mortal mother,     That love should turn in him to gall and flame?     Nay: but the true is not the false hearts brother:     Love cannot love disloyalty: the name     That else it wears is love no more, but shame.