Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
By Time Flies. V. “Piteous My Rhyme Is”Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894)
April 20.
P
What while I muse of love and pain,
Of love misspent, of love in vain,
Of love that is not loved again:
And is this all then?
As long as time is
Love loveth. Time is but a span,
The dalliance space of dying man:
And is this all immortals can?
The gain were small then.
And finds a sort of joy in pain,
And gives with nought to take again,
And loves too well to end in vain:
Is the gain small then?
Love laughs at “never,”
Outlives our life, exceeds the span
Appointed to mere mortal man:
That which love is and does and can,
Is all in all then.