Though you and I so long have been so near—
Have felt each other’s heart-beats hour by hour,
Have watered, plucked, and trampled passion’s flower,
Have known so many days so very dear—
Yet still through every hour of every year
We have sought to win and failed to win the dower
Of perfect insight, and to gain the power
To see what we are, and not what we appear.

Yet you desire such knowledge—would possess,
You say, completion of love; if that were won
—Ah! by it might not haply be undone
The little measure of joy we knew before?
Though we should swear we loved each other more,
How surely we should love each other less!

Love and Knowledge by Edith Nesbit

Wake, do you wake in the dark in the strange far place,
Window and door not set like the ones we knew,
Leaning your face through the dark for another face,
Stretching your arms to the arms that are far from you,
Even as I, through the depth of this darkness, do?

Sleep, do you sleep in the house in the lonely land?
In the lonely room do you hear no steps draw near?
Do you miss in the darkness the hand that implores your hand,
See through the darkness your last dream disappear,
And weep, as I weep, in the outer darkness here?

Dream, do you dream? Nay, never a dream will stay,
Never a phantom is fond, or a vision kind.
Your dreams elude you and fly through the dark my way,
My dreams fly forth to you whom they may not find;
And we in the darkness weep, we weep and are left behind.

In Absence by Edith Nesbit

Yes—kiss my forehead where the pain
Is grinding outwards from my brain!
But will not pity teach you, too,
To kiss these lips no fire burns through—
These cheeks, made colourless and thin
By years you had no portion in—
These weary eyes that wake and ache
Not for your sake—not for your sake:
Kiss, child, and let your kisses see
If they can find the heart in me!
There is a heart—or used to be!

I think the pain is growing less
Under your passionless caress—
Ah! could you teach my lips to crave
But just such kisses as you gave,
And could you, treading my life’s ways,
But lay these ghosts of dear dead days
That walk my world by day and night,
And bar the way of all delight—
If at your touch should waken—.… Vain!
From heaven itself my soul would plain:
‘Give me my ghosts, my ghosts again!’

Ghosts by Edith Nesbit

If you were here,
Hopes, dreams, ambitions, faith would disappear,
Drowned in your eyes; and I should touch your hand,
Forgetting all that now I understand.
For you confuse my life with memories
Of unrememberable ecstasies
Which were, and are not, and can never be; …
Ah! keep the whole earth between you and me.

Fear by Edith Nesbit

O Love, let us part now!
Ours is the tremulous, low-spoken vow,
Ours is the spell of meeting hands and eyes.
The first, involuntary, sacred kiss
Still on our lips in benediction lies.
O Love, be wise!
Love at its best is worth no more than this—
Let us part now!

O Love, let us part now!
Ere yet the roses wither on my brow,
Ere yet the lilies wither in your breast,
Ere the implacable hour shall flower to bear
The seeds of deathless anguish and unrest.
To part is best.
Between us still the drawn sword flameth fair—
Let us part now!

Entreaty by Edith Nesbit

Lady, I see you every day—
More than your other lovers do;
I sit beside you at the Play,
And in the Park I ride with you.

Through picture shows with you I roam
With you I shop and dance and dine;
I know the hours when you’re ‘at home’
To no one else’s knock but mine.

And yet so near and yet so far,
I scarce dare look at you, for fear
I should remark, ‘How sweet you are,
How charming, and how very dear!’

I dare not touch that hand of yours,
Or lend my voice a tender tone;
I know my state of grace endures
By fasting and by prayer alone.

But, in my lonely dreamlit nights,
I kiss your hands, your lips, your eyes;
For absence grants me all the rights
Your presence evermore denies.

Compensation by Edith Nesbit

Where are you—you whose loving breath
Alone can stay my soul from death?
The world’s so wide, I seek it through,
Yet—dare I dream to win to you?
Perhaps your dear desired feet
Pass me in this grey muddy street.
Your face, it may be, has its shrine
In that dull house that’s next to mine.
But I believe, O Life, O Fate,
That when I call on Death and wait
One moment at the unclosing gate
I shall turn back for one last gaze
Along the trampled, sordid ways,
And in the sunset see at last,
Just as the barred gate holds me fast,
Your face, your face, too late.

At The Last by Edith Nesbit

If you and I
Had wings to fly -
Great wings like seagulls’ wings -
How would we soar
Above the roar
Of loud unneeded things!

We two would rise
Through changing skies
To blue unclouded space,
And undismayed
And unafraid
Meet the sun face to face.

But wings we know not;
The feathers grow not
To carry us so high;
And low in the gloom
Of a little room
We weep and say good-bye.

As It Is by Edith Nesbit

All the flight of thoughts here, shy, bold, scared, intrusive,
Fluttering in the sun, between the green and blue,
Wheeling, whirling, poising, lovely and elusive,
How to cage the flying thoughts, my winged delight, for you?

Set a springe of rhyme, and hope to catch them in it?
Strew my love as grain to lure them to the snare?
Watch the hours built up, slow minute piled on minute?
Still the wide sky guards their flight, and still the cage is bare.

Gleam of hovering feathers, brushing me to flout me!
Wings, be weary! Rest! Who loves you more than I?
Caught? Oh fluttering pinions whitening air about me!
Rustling wings, and distant flight, and empty cage and sky!

The Poet To His Love by Edith Nesbit

The snow is white on wood and wold,
The wind is in the firs,
So dead my heart is with the cold,
No pulse within it stirs,
Even to see your face, my dear,
Your face that was my sun;
There is no spring this bitter year,
And summer’s dreams are done.

The snakes that lie about my heart
Are in their wintry sleep;
Their fangs no more deal sting and smart,
No more they curl and creep.
Love with the summer ceased to be;
The frost is firm and fast.
God keep the summer far from me,
And let the snakes’ sleep last!

Touch of your hand could not suffice
To waken them once more;
Nor could the sunshine of your eyes
A ruined spring restore.
But ah-your lips! You know the rest:
The snows are summer rain,
My eyes are wet, and in my breast
The snakes’ fangs meet again.

The Kiss by Edith Nesbit