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CIX



O! never say that I was false of heart,

Though absence seem\'d my flame to qualify,

As easy might I from my self depart

As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:

That is my home of love: if I have rang\'d,

Like him that travels, I return again;

Just to the time, not with the time exchang\'d,

So that myself bring water for my stain.

Never believe though in my nature reign\'d,

All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,

That it could so preposterously be stain\'d, 

To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;

  For nothing this wide universe I call,

  Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all.

 	--William Shakespeare

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.
T. S. Eliot

LXXXVI



Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,

Bound for the prize of all too precious you,

That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,

Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?

Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write,

Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?

No, neither he, nor his compeers by night

Giving him aid, my verse astonished.

He, nor that affable familiar ghost

Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,

As victors of my silence cannot boast;

I was not sick of any fear from thence:

  But when your countenance fill\'d up his line,

  Then lacked I matter; that enfeebled mine.

 	--William Shakespeare