Two Sonnets

II.

Fair friends of Love, who fear to take his pay,

Counting his service loss, his joys too brief,

Too much o'erweighted by his long-drawn grief,

Try his conclusions, ere ye say him nay.

What though his servants walk at close of day,

And hold sad commune o'er some vanished chief,

Not for love's death, but birth of high belief,

Their hearts still burn within them by the way.

They know their love is living, and take shame

That they one moment sought him with the dead;

They feel their love immortal, by the flame

That burns the brighter as it burns unfed.

So weeping, sing Love's praise, who could reframe

The universe whence all but love had fled.