the poets dream...
Nov. 21st, 2010 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
~
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
~
Teller, teller, tell me a tale,
Of love and fear and duty,
I want to die in the arms of love,
I want to die for beauty.
For beauty is the only truth,
And death the only lie,
I want to sing a final tale,
And love before I die.
Jane Yolen
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
~
Teller, teller, tell me a tale,
Of love and fear and duty,
I want to die in the arms of love,
I want to die for beauty.
For beauty is the only truth,
And death the only lie,
I want to sing a final tale,
And love before I die.
Jane Yolen