To Her Father

You had a curiosity upon the abstract,

Finding it budge against you, which she has not;

But otherwise you two were much alike.

So I talked to you, instead of her,

Sounding to catch (I did not know it then)

In your intelligence the signals, the articulate things,

To help me to compute my acts with her.

We used to talk...

We have not talked together in a long time.

Now I lose her, and require another fifteen minutes of your

conversation-

A discourse on love.

I have walked in the hearts of common men

And found not Robert Burns, but thin loves,

Careless feelings, used most to wad sensations . . .

And among those like yourself, in a division of

intellectuality

Who allow the good life

And who have repaired the tiger's morals,

Also I have searched.

You thinking men, who balance your tolerance,

Your kindness, your generosity, and your understanding

Where they will not make an avalanche

Upon your golf games-you thinking men,

Physicists, lawyers, who know a way of living,

Is love an exercise, a duty?

I did not love your daughter so,

Nor had I, though attempting, one fixed code.

I sought her happiness chiefly

And when it kernelled in an indolence of mine,

Or when it listened better to a name Assisi,

I fetched within me all I had of these

And spent them finally. Seizing the instant

Of pleasure, I had itself at least;

Neither could learn the means nor believe the virtue

Of any love's economy and program.

I wanted, and I had with her,

A love immaculate of any reservations,

A love unlawed, and competent to this.

I had the genuine of that

Which men waste lifetimes in pretending to-

I know, because I lose it now.

I was not amoral, I desired

As her best health that those tall things

We had together might not bend down themselves.

(Do you know that we did not lie to each other?)

And to prevent their bending

Must I, watching it fail across the street

Of all my inner purposes, perform the conventional

Bright and well-dressed part, the respectful junior

Of the dinner-table?

Then had she become less than she is-

I should have ceased to love her.

... This other way,

Still I have a sword of beauty through me.

You two were much alike,

And I could talk to you. Sometimes it was as if

My doubts had intercourse among your own.

I have taken fifteen minutes from you,

Fifteen minutes more.