Classic Poem

1.

What had destroyed their edifice of love?
Nothing but love.
They thought they would live in it forever;
Forever secure.
They entrenched themselves behind it
As though it were a fort;
Prepared to withstand the sieges of the world.
And one day they saw there were great gaps in the walls, the roof was caving in, even the foundations sagged;
And they saw that the whole house was crumbling and rotting before their eyes.
For they had built only with love —
And love is not enough.

2.

When the fever abated, when the first rapture sagged;
When the hot years cooled, and passion became a habit,
And the fierce need for each other had passed,
Then came the fiercer call of the world, the grappling encounter with it;
Came children and larger experiments.
And the man threw his pent-up energies into the fight,
And went forth and came back, weary and untiring. . .
And the wife threw herself into his arms saying " This is my world! "
And the woman said, seeing the man lie down beside her, and kiss her wearily and turn away — and sleep,
" Surely he has grown sick of me; he desires me no longer.
He has time for other things, but none for me.
He was so different. Where is his love? "

And the man said,
" She thinks only of herself, who was once so spendthrift of her interests;
Like a great stone she hangs herself upon me.
In the morning I am burdened with her small concerns, and at night her heavy kisses weigh me down —
She was so different. Where is her love? "

So the years passed.
And they who had only love between them,
And nothing else but love,
Lost even that.

3.

" Keep us together, " they pleaded, " together, O Love.
" Our hands are waiting, eager to be tied,
And we would have your golden chains about us forever.
Keep us together, O Love. "

They wore their chains like a decoration;
They held them up boastfully for all men to see;
They patted and jingled them like bracelets.
And one day, years afterward, when they were bruised and beaten,
They saw, as though for the first time, the deep grooves in their flesh;
And how they, that were once tied gladly and with ornaments,
Were now bound with malignant fetters.

They did not gasp or cry out.
They had been far too well schooled;
Fed on stale forms and trained to soft acceptance,
They did not protest. But, with an infinite amount of tact,
They smiled;
Boasting the chains that they could never break.

4.

Their love was once a fire.
A blaze that lit the world and leaped laughing to the sky.
A flame that split the heavens, threatening the stars;

That caught up Time like a dry twig, and even laid hold of Eternity,
Bringing it to earth.
Caught in the bright and quivering flood,
They were lifted and scorched, snatched up and cleansed;
The slag of manners and breeding was burned away from them.

Poor, fond, proper, ignorant children —
What availed them their blaze.
" It is a holy fire, " they said, " and who are we to touch it;
To feed it or do aught but be warmed by its glamour — even when it dies down.
A passion sent from heaven and it should burn forever.
How dare we heap fuel on it,
As though it were stuff to cook with. . . "

Their love was once a fire;
And, like a fire, it burnt itself out. . .
And often these two sit beside the gray ashes,
And wonder
Why fire cannot feed upon itself —
Nor love on love.

5.

In the beginning was the Word
" Love, — Love, " — it ran through the skies.
It fired Creation to declare itself
And brought the seed out of sterility.
It sprang from nothingness and out of nothingness it called:

" Love — love. ...
I am come to scatter life.
I shall flood the void with lavish strength;
I shall impregnate the skies.

Love — love. ...
I shall sow the suns like seeds —
God shall be made from the need of me,
And Time shall reach out from my loins. "

And, as the echoes of that confident singing, stirred and ceased —
Time arose, groping, and stumbled into the light.
Dawn stretched its limbs and grew musical with its own beauty.
The moon rose with a divine hesitation, and timidly the first stars came out.
And God began creating with blundering fingers. . .
Poor clumsy things He made; eager, pathetic experiments —
Flinging. His failures away like a petulant child;
Amused when they turned into comets.
Then one day. He made the earth — and God saw it was good.
And with a loving, careful turn of the hand,
He set the first man in a garden, and fashioned his mate.

*****

Adam looked up at Eve; she was stretching and yawning.
" Come, " said he, " we might as well sleep.
We sit here, day after day, looking at each other; like the animals, saying never a word. "
And Eve said, " What else is there to do?
The place seems duller every hour —
The same birds, the same hills, the never-changing vistas, the unvarying thoughts;
The tiresome greeting of the staring sun, the endless repetition of the night. . .
Everything in the world grows stale;
Except, " she added hastily, " our love. "
And Adam yawned assent.

*****

One day, as God, with anxious, knitted brows,
Was staring past the skies, an angel plucked his sleeve.
He was a thin, important-looking seraph,
With a sharp nose and foxy eyes.
" Look, God, " said he, " just look at your two people —
Isn't it terrible, the way they are behaving. "
" I was afraid of this, " said God,
" And yet, now it has come, I am afraid no longer. "
" But look, God, " almost shrieked the aroused one, his wings quivering with excitement,
" Look, she has taken the fruit —
And now she is offering it to him.
God, " he cried, with meddlesome eagerness,
" Let me go down and stop them before it is too late! "
" No, " said God with a great, compassionate sweetness,
" It is better so.
Let them have wisdom
For they have only love.
And Love is not enough. "