All Thats Not Love

Alan Seeger

All that’s not love is the dearth of my days,

The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit,

The temple in times without prayer, without praise,

The altar unset and the candle unlit.

Let me survive not the lovable sway

Of early desire, nor see when it goes

The courts of Life’s abbey in ivied decay,

Whence sometime sweet anthems and incense arose.

The delicate hues of its sevenfold rings

The rainbow outlives not; their yellow and blue

The butterfly sees not dissolve from his wings,

But even with their beauty life fades from them too.

No more would I linger past Love’s ardent bounds

Nor live for aught else but the joy that it craves,

That, burden and essence of all that surrounds,

Is the song in the wind and the smile on the waves.