Impressions: A Book of Verse/Exile: Her Thought Unspoken

by Lilla Cabot Perry

 

EXILE: HER THOUGHT UNSPOKEN

I KNOW not if I love. When you are by
I know not, see not, think not aught but you!
Despairing love my portion when you sue
Despairingly, yet must I love deny
Hoping thus to regain identity
And find once more of my own heart the clue,
Nor grieve that I escape when you pursue,
Like fawn whose heart is with the hounds in cry!

Let me go far away, that thus alone
When time and space us two shall separate,
My heart may clearly speak and thus discover
If you and I be really two or one?
For when Imagination masks as Fate,
One might love Love and think she loved the lover.