Must I convey at last the news to thee?
Must I now mourn the love that lived in me?
Gone with the autumn, with the dying year.
Gone with the kisses that are yet so near!
Gone with the swallows somewhere o’er the sea!
But with the Spring will he again
Return, will he with me remain?
Must I till then, remembering naught,
Forgetting all that love had brought,
Grope in the shadows of the slain?
Must I forget the day
That took my love away,
And all the happy hours
That reared for him their towers
And crowned him with the flowers
Of all the queens of May?
Must I alone
My once my own,
In my retreat
The new year greet,
And winter meet,
And winds hear moan?
Not yet
Can I
Forget;
But why
One clings
And sings
To things
That die?
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on April 9, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
I know I have been happiest at your side;
But what is done, is done, and all’s to be.
And small the good, to linger dolefully,—
Gaily it lived, and gallantly it died.
I will not make you songs of hearts denied,
And you, being man, would have no tears of me,
And should I offer you fidelity,
You’d be, I think, a little terrified.
Yet this the need of woman, this her curse:
To range her little gifts, and give, and give,
Because the throb of giving’s sweet to bear.
To you, who never begged me vows or verse,
My gift shall be my absence, while I live;
But after that, my dear, I cannot swear.
From Enough Rope (Boni & Liveright, 1926) by Dorothy Parker. This poem is in the public domain.