Poems

“Blaspheme not love, ye lovers, nor dispraiseThe wise divinity that makes you blind,Sealing the eyes, but showing to the mindThe high perfection from which nature strays.For love is God, and in unfathomed waysBrings forth the beauty for which fancy pined.I loved, and lost my love among mankind;But I have found it after many days.Oh, trust in God, and banish rash despair,That, feigning evil, is itself the curse!My angel is come back, more sad and fair,And witness to the truth of love I bear,With too much rapture for this sacred verse,At the exceeding answer to my prayer.””

— George Santayana

“Love not as do the flesh-imprisoned menWhose dreams are of a bitter bought caress,Or even of a maiden's tendernessWhom they love only that she loves again.For it is but thyself thou lovest then,Or what thy thoughts would glory to possess;But love thou nothing thou wouldst love the lessIf henceforth ever hidden from thy ken.Love but the formless and eternal WholeFrom whose effulgence one unheeded rayBreaks on this prism of dissolving clayInto the flickering colours of thy soul.These flash and vanish; bid them not to stay,For wisdom brightens as they fade away.””

— George Santayana

“When man was in the world a wide-eyed boy,And clouds of sorrow crossed his sky of joyTo scatter dewdrops on the buds of May.Then could he work and love and fight and pray,Nor heartsick grow in fortune's long employ.Mighty to build and ruthless to destroyHe lived, while masked death unquestioned lay.Now ponder we the ruins of the years,And groan beneath the weight of boasted gain;No unsung bacchanal can charm our earsAnd lead our dances to the woodland fane,No hope of heaven sweeten our few tearsAnd hush the importunity of pain.””

— George Santayana