The Year of Love

There were four loves that one by one,     Following the seasons and the sun,     Passed over without tears, and fell     Away without farewell.     The first was made of gold and tears,     The next of aspen-leaves and fears,     The third of rose-boughs and rose-roots,     The last love of strange fruits.     These were the four loves faded. Hold     Some minutes fast the time of gold     When our lips each way clung and clove     To a face full of love.     The tears inside our eyelids met,     Wrung forth with kissing, and wept wet     The faces cleaving each to each     Where the blood served for speech.     The second, with low patient brows     Bound under aspen-coloured boughs     And eyes made strong and grave with sleep     And yet too weak to weep     The third, with eager mouth at ease     Fed from late autumn honey, lees     Of scarce gold left in latter cells     With scattered flower-smells     Hair sprinkled over with spoilt sweet     Of ruined roses, wrists and feet     Slight-swathed, as grassy-girdled sheaves     Hold in stray poppy-leaves     The fourth, with lips whereon has bled     Some great pale fruits slow colour, shed     From the rank bitten husk whence drips     Faint blood between her lips     Made of the heat of whole great Junes     Burning the blue dark round their moons     (Each like a mown red marigold)     So hard the flame keeps hold     These are burnt thoroughly away.     Only the first holds out a day     Beyond these latter loves that were     Made of mere heat and air.     And now the time is winterly     The first love fades too: none will see,     When April warms the world anew,     The place wherein love grew.