A Song
Once — and only once — you gave
One rich gift, which Memory
Shuts within itself, to save
Sweet and fresh, while life may be:
Shuts it like a rose-leaf treasured
In the pages of a book,
Which we open, when heart-leisured,
Now and then — softly to look.
If I told you of that gift
How and when, the tend'ring of it,
Would you, out of rose-leaf thrift,
Claim from me the rend'ring of it?
That might make it two for one
('Twas of such unwonted kind!)
Half a mind I have to tell you
Not to tell you half a mind.
Edwin Arnold’s other poems:
- The Division of Poland
- The Marriage
- The Rhine and The Moselle
- With a Bracelet in the Form of a Snake
- Hagar in the Wilderness
Poems of other poets with the same name (Стихотворения других поэтов с таким же названием):
953