Oh, Unforgotten and Only Lover

Oh, unforgotten and only lover,
    Many years have swept us apart,
But none of the long dividing seasons
    Slay your memory in my heart. 
In the clash and clamour of things unlovely
    My thoughts drift back to the times that were,
When I, possessing thy pale perfection,
    Kissed the eyes and caressed the hair.

Other passions and loves have drifted
    Over this wandering, restless soul,
Rudderless, chartless, floating always
    With some new current of chance control. 
But thine image is clear in the whirling waters—­
    Ah, forgive—­that I drag it there,
For it is so part of my very being
    That where I wander it too must fare.

Ah, I have given thee strange companions,
    To thee—­so slender and chaste and cool—­
But a white star loses no glimmer of beauty
    In all the mud of a miry pool
That holds the grace of its white reflection;
    Nothing could fleck thee, nothing could stain,
Thou hast made a home for thy delicate beauty
    Where all things peaceful and lovely reign.

Doubtless the night that my soul remembers
    Was a sin to thee, and thine only one. 
Thou thinkest of it, if thou thinkest ever,
    As a crime committed, a deed ill done. 
But for me, the broken, the desert-dweller,
    Following Life through its underways,—­
I know if those midnights thou hadst not granted
    I had not lived through these after days.

And that had been well for me; all would say so,
    What have I done since I parted from thee? 
But things that are wasted, and full of ruin,
    All unworthy, even of me. 
Yet, it was to me that the gift was given,
    No greater joy have the Gods above,—­
That night of nights when my only lover,
    Though all reluctant, granted me love.

For thy beauty was mine, and my spirit knows it,
    Never, ah, never my heart forgets,
One thing fixed, in the torrent of changing,
    Faults and follies and fierce regrets. 
Thine eyes and thy hair, that were lovely symbols
    Of that white soul that their grace enshrined,
They are part of me and my life for ever,
    In every fibre and cell entwined.

Men might argue that having known thee
    I had grown faithful and pure as thee,
Had turned at the touch of thy grace and glory
    From the average pathways trodden by me. 
Hadst thou been kinder or I been stronger
    It may be even these things had been—­
But one thing is clear to my soul for ever,
    I owe my owning of thee to sin.

Had I been colder I had not reached thee,
    Besmirched the ermine, beflecked the snow—­
It was only sheer and desperate passion
    That won thy beauty in years ago. 
And not for the highest virtues in Heaven,
    The utmost grace that the soul can name,
Would I resign what the sin has brought me,
    Which I hold glory, and thou—­thy shame.