Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.


Other love poems here on Moss Kingdom: Love is Not All by Edna St. Vincent MillayPaper HeartsLes Bijoux by Charles Baudelaire (translated by Jacques LeClercq)A Seduction: in Four SeasonsLa Petite Mort: a breath of agonySonnet 28 from “14 Lines”Elegy 20 To His Mistress Going to Bed by John DonneNon Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae by Ernest DowsonRoll On Columbia: a sonnet for our tenth anniversary.