An Insincere Wish Addressed to a Beggar

An Insincere Wish Addressed to a Beggar

Original Text
Mary E. Coleridge, Poems (London: Elkin Mathews, 1918). PR 6005 O3P6 1918 Robarts Library
1We are not near enough to love,
2    I can but pity all your woe;
3For wealth has lifted me above,
4    And falsehood set you down below.
5If you were true, we still might be
6    Brothers in something more than name;
7And were I poor, your love to me
8    Would make our differing bonds the same.
9But golden gates between us stretch,
10    Truth opens her forbidding eyes;
11You can't forget that I am rich,
12    Nor I that you are telling lies.
13Love never comes but at love's call,
14    And pity asks for him in vain;
15Because I cannot give you all,
16    You give me nothing back again.
17And you are right with all your wrong,
18    For less than all is nothing too;
19May Heaven beggar me ere long,
20    And Truth reveal herself to you!
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2005
Rhyme
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