I HE kisses me! Ah, now, at last, He says good night as it should be, His great warm eyes bent yearningly Above my face -- his arms locked fast About me, and mine own eyes dim With happy tears for love of him. He kisses me! Last night, beneath A swarm of stars, he said I stood His one fair form of womanhood, And springing, shut me in the sheath Of a caress that almost hid Me from the good his kisses did. He kisses me! He kisses me! This is the sweetest song I know, And so I sing it very low And faint, and O so tenderly That, though you listen, none but he May hear it as he kisses me. II "How can I make you love me more?" -- A thousand times she asks me this, Her lips uplifted with the kiss That I have tasted o'er and o'er, Till now I drain it with no sense Other than utter indolence. "How can I make you love me more?" -- A thousand times her questioning face Has nestled in its resting-place Unanswered, till, though I adore This thing of being loved, I doubt Not I could get along without. "How can she make me love her more?" -- Ah! little woman, if, indeed, I might be frank as is the need Of frankness, I would fall before Her very feet, and there confess My love were more if hers were less. III Since I am old I have no care To babble silly tales of when I loved, and lied, as other men Have done, who boasted here and there, They would have died for the fair thing They after murdered, marrying. Since I am old I reason thus -- No thing survives, of all the past, But just regret enough to last Us till the clods have smothered us; -- Then, with our dead loves, side by side, We may, perhaps, be satisfied. Since I am old, and strive to blow Alive the embers of my youth And early loves, I find, in sooth, An old man's heart may burn so low, 'Tis better just to calmly sit And rake the ashes over it. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...VENUS IN A GARDEN by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON LA CONDUCTORA DEL DESEO/CONDUIT by VIRGIL SUAREZ TO THE SHADE OF PO CHU-I by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS QUATRAIN: FATE by RALPH WALDO EMERSON THE BALLAD OF DEAD LADIES by FRANCOIS VILLON FOR THE INAUGURATION OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL, CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY by WALT WHITMAN |