A SONG OF FORGETTING

Come, Time, and in no timid measure

Put forth your gnarled hand on my soul.

Make there irrevocable erasure

Of this hour’s love, too beautiful.

Or ever shall come the fallen rose,

Long nights and lone, the songless days,

And Memory mock life’s lingering close

With this the bitterest thing she says

Of loving waned and beauty ghostly

Of truth outlived and glory set.

Since life’s a honey-harvest mostly

Give me its mercy, peril, passion

And, being done, let us forget.