The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (5.1895)

Perennial

By Ernest Wentworth

She asked her lover, smiling, w If one blend
Two sweet sounds in a perfect symphony,

Or two harmonious colours tili they lend
A selfsame hue,—teil me, what alchemy
Can part them after ? . . . So myself and thee,

My life and thine, fast mingled, nought can rend
Asunder ever.”-—Nay, but hear the end.

The lovers’ lives, sometime thus wholly one,—

One in minds’ thought, hearts’ wish, and bodies’ breath,
Now singly such far-severed courses run
As if each had survived the other’s death.

Oh, sad Strange thing ! Yet, as the Wise Man saith,
There is no new thing underneath the sun.

How early, then, were such sad things begun !