Canto XXXV

Yet if some voice that man could trust

      Should murmur from the narrow house:

      The cheeks drop in; the body bows;

Man dies: nor is there hope in dust:

Might I not say, yet even here,

      But for one hour, O Love, I strive

      To keep so sweet a thing alive?

But I should turn mine ears and hear

The moanings of the homeless sea,

      The sound of streams that swift or slow

      Draw down Æonian hills, and sow

The dust of continents to be;

And Love would answer with a sigh,

      'The sound of that forgetful shore

      Will change my sweetness more and more,

Half-dead to know that I shall die.'

O me! what profits it to put

      An idle case? If Death were seen

      At first as Death, Love had not been,

Or been in narrowest working shut,

Mere fellowship of sluggish moods,

      Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape

      Had bruised the herb and crush'd the grape,

And bask'd and batten'd in the woods.