No One So Much As You
No one so much as you
Loves this my clay,
Or would lament as you
Its dying day.
You know me through and through
Though I have not told,
And though with what you know
You are not bold.
None ever was so fair
As I thought you:
Not a word can I bear
Spoken against you.
All that I ever did
For you seemed coarse
Compared with what I hid
Nor put in force.
Scarce my eyes dare meet you
Lest they should prove
I but respond to you
And do not love.
We look and understand,
We cannot speak
Except in trifles and
Words the most weak.
For I at most accept
Your love, regretting
That is all: I have kept
Only a fretting
That I could not return
All that you gave
And could not ever burn
With the love you have,
Till sometimes it did seem
Better it were
Never to see you more
Than linger here
With only gratitude
Instead of love –
A pine in solitude
Cradling a dove.
Source of the text – Against Oblivion: Some Lives of the Twentieth-Century Poets, written and edited by Ian Hamilton. New York
Bourguignomicon: Heavy light verse; confessional over easy. With accentual accents & homespun rhymes, the simplicity of this poem assumes rhetorical force.
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