The Growth of Love XI

The Growth of Love XI

Original Text
At the Long Sault and Other New Poems, ed. Duncan Campbell Scott and Edward Killoran Brown (Toronto: Ryerson, 1943): 42, as reprinted in The Poems of Archibald Lampman (including At the Long Sault), intro. by Margaret Coulby Whitridge (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974).
XI
1Belovèd, those who moan of love's brief day
2Shall find but little grace with me, I guess,
3Who know too well this passion's tenderness
4To deem that it shall lightly pass away,
5A moment's interlude in life's dull play;
6Though many loves have lingered to distress,
7So shall not ours, sweet Lady, ne'ertheless,
8But deepen with us till both heads be grey.
9For perfect love is like a fair green plant,
10That fades not with its blossoms, but lives on,
11And gentle lovers shall not come to want,
12Though fancy with its first mad dream be gone;
13Sweet is the flower, whose radiant glory flies,
14But sweeter still the green that never dies.
Publication Start Year
1943
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1997.