My love were compassionate only

Or such as it needs would be.

But eyes of father and mother

Like sunlight shed on you shine:

What need you have heed of another

Such new strange love as is mine?

It is not meet if unruly

Hands take of the children's bread

And cast it to dogs; but truly

The dogs after all would be fed.

On crumbs from the children's table

That crumble, dropped from above,

My heart feeds, fed with unstable

Loose waifs of a child's light love.

Though love in your heart were brittle

As glass that breaks with a touch,

You haply would lend him a little

Who surely would give you much.

339 XIII

339

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