nunoncastors

Love unrequited is a crushing yoke;
but if you see love as a game,
a trophy,
then unrequited love’s absurd, a joke–
like Cyrano de Bergerac’s odd profile.
One day a hard-boiled Russian in the theater
said to his wife, in words that clearly hurt her:
“Why does this Cyrano upset you all?
The fool!
Now I, for instance, I would never
allow some bitch to get me in a fever…
I’d simply find another one–
that’s all.”
Behind his wife’s reproachful eyes there gleamed
a beaten, widowed look of desperation.
From every pore her husband oozed,
it seemed,
the lethal sweat of crude self-satisfaction.
How many are like him–
great healthy men,
who, lacking the capacity to suffer,
call women “chicks” or “broads”;
it sounds much tougher.
Yet am I not myself a bit like them?
We yawn
and play at shabby little passions,
discarding hearts as though they’re last year’s fashions,
afraid of tragedy,
afraid to pay.
And you and I, no doubt, are being weaklings
whenever we so often force our feelings
to take the easier,
less binding way.
I often hear the inner coward whining,
from murky depths my impulse undermining:
“Hey, careful now;
don’t get involved…”
I weakly take the line of least resistance,
and lose, who knows, from sheer lack of persistence,
a priceless chance of unrequited love.
A man who’s clever and can use his head
can always count on a response from women,
for poor Cyrano’s chivalry’s not dead:
it is not men who show it now, but women.
In love you’re either chivalrous
or you
don’t love.
All men of one law stand indicted:
if you can’t love with love that’s unrequited,
you cannot love–no matter what you do.
God grant us grace that we may know the pain
of fruitless longing,
unreturned emotion,
delightful torment as we wait in vain:
the hapless happiness of vain devotion.
For secretly I’m longing to be brave,
to warm my ice-cold heart with passion’s burning;
in lukewarm love affairs enmeshed,
I rave
of unrequited love and hopeless yearning.

The linnet in the rocky dells,
The moor-lark in the air,
The bee among the heather bells
That hide my lady fair:

The wild deer browse above her breast;
The wild birds raise their brood;
And they, her smiles of love caress’d,
Have left her solitude!

I ween that when the grave’s dark wall
Did first her form retain,
They thought their hearts could ne’er recall
The light of joy again.

They thought the tide of grief would flow
Uncheck’d through future years;
But where is all their anguish now,
And where are all their tears?

Well, let them fight for honour’s breath,
Or pleasure’s shade pursue—
The dweller in the land of death
Is changed and careless too.

And if their eyes should watch and weep
Till sorrow’s source were dry,
She would not, in her tranquil sleep,
Return a single sigh!

Blow, west wind, by the lonely mound:
And murmur, summer streams!
There is no need of other sound
To soothe my lady’s dreams.

When I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,
Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
Half closes the garden path.

And when I come to the garden ground,
The whir of sober birds
Up from the tangle of withered weeds
Is sadder than any words

A tree beside the wall stands bare,
But a leaf that lingered brown,
Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
Comes softly rattling down.

I end not far from my going forth
By picking the faded blue
Of the last remaining aster flower
To carry again to you.

A BIRD sang sweet and strong
In the top of the highest tree,
He said, “I pour out my heart in song
For the summer that soon shall be.”

But deep in the shady wood,
Another bird sang, “I pour
My heart on the solemn solitude
For the springs that return no more.”

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They ’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!