We rose from rapture

Sonnets

                     by Edna St. Vincent Millet

XIV

Since of no creature living the last breath

Is twice required, or twice the ultimate pain,

Seeing how to quit your arms is very death,

'Tis likely that I shall not die again;

And likely “tis that Time whose gross decree

Sends now the dawn to clamour at our door,

Thus having done his evil worst to me,

Will thrust me by, will harry me no more.

When you are corn and roses and at rest

I shall endure, a dense and sanguine ghost,

To haunt the scene where I was happiest,

To bend above the thing I loved the most;

And rise, and wring my hands, and steal away

As I do now, before the advancing day.

XXVIII

When we are old and these rejoicing veins

Are frosty channels to a muted stream,

And out of all our burning there remains

No feeblest spark to fire us, even in dream,

This be our solace: that it was not said

When we were young and warm and in our prime,

Umpon our couch we lay as lie the dead,
Sleeping away the unreturning time.

O sweet, O heavy-lidded, O my love,

When morning strikes her spear upon the land,
And we must rise and arm us and reprove

The insolent daylight with a steady hand,

Be not discountenanced if the knowing know
We rose from rapture but an hour ago.

From The Voice That is Great Within Us (1971).