A. Mary F. Robinson-Darmesteter (1857–1944)

I LOVE my lover; on the heights above me

He mocks my poor attainment with a frown.

I, looking up as he is looking down,

By his displeasure guess he still doth love me;

For his ambitious love would ever prove me

More excellent than I as yet am shown,

So, straining for some good ungrasped, unknown,

I vainly would become his image of me.

And, reaching through the dreadful gulfs that sever

Our souls, I strive with darkness nights and days,

Till my perfected work towards him I raise,

Who laughs thereat, and scorns me more than ever,

Yet his upbraiding is beyond all praise.

This lover that I love I call: Endeavour.

II.

I have another lover loving me,

Himself beloved of all men, fair and true.

He would not have me change although I grew

Perfect as Light, because more tenderly

He loves myself than loves what I might be.

Low at my feet he sings the winter through,

And, never won, I love to hear him woo.

For in my heaven both sun and moon is he,

To my bare life a fruitful-flooding Nile,

His voice like April airs that in our isle

Wake sap in trees that slept since autumn went.

His words are all caresses, and his smile

The relic of some Eden ravishment;

And he that loves me so I call: Content.