Erotica/I Love My Love

by Arthur Clark Kennedy

I Love My Love

I love my Love because my Love loves me.
Ah! that she did so as I'd fain be loved
With love by which the mountains may be moved,
Uprooted and cast in the midmost sea.

Such love surpassing, deep and broad and high,
O'ershadowing all things else in earth, in heaven,
Love unalloyed at morn, at noon, at even,
Love unalloyed when darkness holds the sky.

A Love that overcometh and will prove
Itself through storm and sunshine, frost and fire;
A Love which naught can change, which naught can tire,
Even Death's self can not destroy such love.

So, Sweet, let me set seal upon your mouth
And lie within your arms' encircling fold,
Gaze in your eyes, and in their depth behold
Twin starry loves whilst all the balmy South

Gives up her richest spices in your breath,
When heart tumultuously doth beat on heart,
The while our spirits mingle ne'er to part
Wholly again, though earthly ties by Death

Are severed, 'tis but for a time, and then
Our spirits will commingle and commune,
Each with the other strung to Love's one tune
And the sweet memories of what has been.

For past and present still to us belong,
To you and I, dear Love, then wherefore waste
Thoughts on the unknown future, rather taste
The sweets of life and do not call it wrong

To be too happy. Let us therefore cast
An offering to the Gods like those of eld
Strove to appease the Deity who held
The compensating balances. And last,

When this life's cup is drunken to the lees,
Leaving its after-taste upon your tongue,
You yet will kiss my lips with lips unwrung
By bitterness regretful. On my knees

I pray you, Sweetheart, to be wise in time.
You cannot change the Ethiop's dusky skin!
The leopard's spots! So leave him with his sin
Ere his contagion drags you through more slime.

The false God whom you worshipp'd shall lie dead,
His groves hewn down, his altar overthrown;
Peace, happiness, and love shall be your own,
Three golden halos hung above your head.

For you have eaten of the tree of life
After the tree of knowledge, and shall live
Another life, and all the past shall give
Its blackness up, its sorrow, sin, and strife,

To form a background for the fair "to be,"
Which we'll embroider with love's golden skein
The story of your past, of false love slain
And true love shrined upon its memory.

The past shall be a dream; you will awake
And wonder could such things have ever been.
Your scars of slavery which now are green
Shall be no more. You will arise and take

Within your grasp that fellow hand which Fate
At length has guided to its destined end.
We grope the whole world round until we bend
Our steps predoom'd through Love's celestial gate.