I said to love

I need not go
Through sleet and snow
To where I know
She waits for me;
She will tarry me there
Till I find it fair,
And have time to spare
From company.

When I've overgot
The world somewhat,
When things cost not
Such stress and strain,
Is soon enough
By cypress sough
To tell my Love
I am come again.

And if  someday,
When none cries nay,
I still delay
To seek her side,
(Though ample measure
Of fitting leisure
Await my pleasure)
She will not chide.

What not upbraid me
That I delayed me,
Nor ask what stayed me
So long? Ah no!
New cares may claim me,
New loves inflame me,
She will not blame me,
But suffer it so.

The bars are thick with drops that show
As they gather themselves from the fog
Like silver buttons ranged in a row,
And as evenly spaced as if measured, although 
They fall at the feeblest jog.

They load the leafless hedge hard by,
And the blades of last year's grass,
While the fallow ploughland turned up nigh
In raw rolls, clammy and clogging lie
Too clogging for feet to pass.

How dry it was on a farback day
When straws hung the hedge and around,
When amid the sheaves in amorous play
In curtained bonnets and light array
Bloomed a bevy now underground!

I kissed them in fancy as I came
Away in the morning glow:
I kissed them through the glass of her picture-frame:
She did not know.
I kissed them in love, in troth, in laughter,
When she knew all; long so!
That I should kiss them in a shroud thereafter
She did not know.

In five-score summers! All new eyes,
New minds, new modes, new fools, new wise;
New woes to weep, new joys to prize;

With nothing left of me and you
In that live century's vivid view
Beyond a pinch of dust or two;

A century which, if not sublime,
Will show, I doubt not, at its prime,
A scope above this blinkered time.

- Yet what to me how far above?
For I would only ask thereof
That thy worm should be my worm, Love!

  For Life I had never cared greatly,
      As worth a man's while;
      Peradventures unsought,
   Peradventures that finished in nought,
Had kept me from youth and through manhood till lately
      Unwon by its style.

   In earliest years -- why I know not -- 
      I viewed it askance;
      Conditions of doubt,
   Conditions that leaked slowly out,
May haply have bent me to stand and to show not
      Much zest for its dance.

   With symphonies soft and sweet colour
      It courted me then,
      Till evasions seemed wrong,
   Till evasions gave in to its song,
And I warmed, until living aloofly loomed duller
      Than life among men.

   Anew I found nought to set eyes on,
      When, lifting its hand,
      It uncloaked a star,
   Uncloaked it from fog-damps afar,
And showed its beams burning from pole to horizon
      As bright as a brand.

   And so, the rough highway forgetting,
      I pace hill and dale
      Regarding the sky,
   Regarding the vision on high,
And thus re-illumed have no humour for letting
      My pilgrimage fail.

I said to Love,
"It is not now as in old days
When men adored thee and thy ways
All else above; 
Named thee the Boy, the Bright, the One
Who spread a heaven beneath the sun,"
I said to Love.

I said to him,
"We now know more of thee than then;
We were but weak in judgment when,
With hearts abrim,
We clamoured thee that thou would'st please
Inflict on us thine agonies,"
I said to him.

I said to Love,
"Thou art not young, thou art not fair,
No elfin darts, no cherub air,
Nor swan, nor dove
Are thine; but features pitiless,
And iron daggers of distress,"
I said to Love.

"Depart then, Love!
Man's race shall perish, threatenest thou,
WIthout thy kindling coupling-vow?
The age to come the man of now
Know nothing of?
We fear not such a threat from thee;
We are too old in apathy!
Mankind shall cease.. -
So let it be,"
I said to Love.