O you, love's mendicancy who never tried, <br />How little of your almsman me you know! <br />Your little languid hand in mine you slide, <br />Like to a child says--'Kiss me and let me go!' <br />And night for this is fretted with my tears, <br />While I:-'How soon this heavenly neck doth tire <br />Bending to me from its transtellar spheres!' <br />Ah, heart all kneaded out of honey and fire! <br />Who bound thee to a body nothing worth, <br />And shamed thee much with an unlovely soul, <br />That the most strainedest charity of earth <br />Distasteth soon to render back the whole <br />Of thine inflam-ed sweets and gentilesse! <br />Whereat, like an unpastured Titan, thou <br />Gnaw'st on thyself for famine's bitterness, <br />And leap'st against thy chain. Sweet Lady, how <br />Little a linking of the hand to you! <br />Though I should touch yours careless for a year, <br />Not one blue vein would lie divinelier blue <br />Upon your fragile temple, to unsphere <br />The seraphim for kisses! Not one curve <br />Of your sad mouth would droop more sad and sweet. <br />But little food love's beggars needs must serve, <br />That eye your plenteous graces from the street. <br />A hand-clasp I must feed on for a night, <br />A noon, although the untasted feast you lay, <br />To mock me, of your beauty. That you might <br />Be lover for one space, and make essay <br />What 'tis to pass unsuppered to your couch, <br />Keep fast from love all day; and so be taught <br />The famine which these craving lines avouch! <br />Ah! miser of good things that cost thee naught, <br />How know'st thou poor men's hunger?--Misery! <br />When I go doleless and unfed by thee!<br /><br />Francis Thompson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/love-s-almsman-plaineth-his-fare/
