To One on her Birthday
To One on her Birthday
Original Text
The Poetical Works of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt: A Complete Edition (London: Macmillan, 1914): I, 344. PR 4149 B8 1914 Robarts Library
1How shall I choose to wish you happiness
2On this day or another? Your life's way
3Has passed already far beyond our guess,
4Who only watch and wait for you and pray.
5Our love is but the creature of man's clay,
6And you have chosen grief for your soul's bliss.
7How shall I offer you mere joy to-day,
8Nor seem for greater wealth to bring you less?
9You have a world to win by faith sublime.
10You have a heart to break for human woe.
11That which you seek was never seen in Time.
12That you shall find I dare not seek to know.
13Yet will I wish you this, for your new birth,
14You still may love: the sweetest thing on Earth.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2005
Rhyme
Form