Impressions: A Book of Verse/Love and Anger

by Lilla Cabot Perry

 

LOVE AND ANGER

IF Love from out the citadel thou'd thrust
Then drive out Anger too, Love's nimble 'page
Dancing attendance for the promised wage,
Forgetfulness—yet only paid on trust!
Love's cloak of pride were trailing in the dust
But for his ready services, and yet,
As ready payment he can never get,
For Love and Anger both gnaw memory's crust.

If thou canst not forgive her, thy heart's core
Still holds an altar to her consecrate!
There burns the lamp, if lit by love or hate,
Though thou fling stones where flowers were placed before.
'T is not for the forgetting, be it said,
That savages heap stones above their dead!