To One Who would Make a Confession
To One Who would Make a Confession
Original Text
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, "The Love Sonnets of Proteus," "Part III. -- Gods and False Gods," LXII, Poems (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923): 68.
1Oh! leave the past to bury its own dead.
2The Past is naught to us, the Present all.
3What need of last year's leaves to strew Love's bed?
4What need of ghosts to grace a festival?
5I would not, if I could, those days recall,
6Those days not ours. For us the feast is spread,
7The lamps are lit, and music plays withal.
8Then let us love and leave the rest unsaid.
9This island is our home. Around it roar
10Great gulfs and oceans, channels, straits, and seas.
11What matter in what wreck we reached the shore,
12So we both reached it? We can mock at these.
13Oh! leave the Past, if Past indeed there be.
14I would not know it. I would know but thee.
Publication Start Year
1881
Publication Notes
The Love Songs of Proteus (London: Kegan Paul, 1881): 66. PR 4149 B8L6 1881 Robarts Library.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2005
Rhyme
Form