I send you this bouquet, which my own
hands just culled from the marvellous bed;
if spring’s not gathered tonight, I said,
tomorrow her beauty will have flown.
Let its light serve as a sermon then,
how your charms flourishing their fair May
shall soon be invested with frost-grey
and, bit by bit, become forgotten.
Time paces restlessly on, my sweet,
and yet it is not time’s but our feet
that point to a house beneath the hill,
and the joy we are now free to choose
is something of which skulls have no news:
O love, love me while you’re lovely still.
