Sullen Moods

Love, do not count your labour lost         Though I turn sullen, grim, retired     Even at your side; my thought is crossed         With fancies by old longings fired.     And when I answer you, some days         Vaguely and wildly, do not fear     That my love walks forbidden ways,         Breaking the ties that hold it here.     If I speak gruffly, this mood is         Mere indignation at my own     Shortcomings, plagues, uncertainties;         I forget the gentler tone.     'You,' now that you have come to be         My one beginning, prime and end,     I count at last as wholly 'me,'         Lover no longer nor yet friend.     Friendship is flattery, though close hid;         Must I then flatter my own mind?     And must (which laws of shame forbid)         Blind love of you make self-love blind?     ... Do not repay me my own coin,         The sharp rebuke, the frown, the groan;     No, stir my memory to disjoin         Your emanation from my own.     Help me to see you as before         When overwhelmed and dead, almost,     I stumbled on that secret door         Which saves the live man from the ghost.     Be once again the distant light,         Promise of glory not yet known     In full perfection, -wasted quite         When on my imperfection thrown.