Love Sonnet XVII
Beloved, lest I should remember, I
Must swift forget the wonder of last night.
Hot memory would but blacken out my sight
And dull my senses till they seemed to die.
How could I live, remembering that sigh…
That breath…that sob…that all sublime delight?
Eternal joy is death, I think, and might
Not such sweet madness kill me, coming nigh?
I died with you that hour. Or, if not, merged
Myself in you, commingling all my life
Within your own, until I fled and fled
Into your blood; and my pure pulses surged,
Heaped with the wedded bliss of man and wife…
Dying, I lived…and living, I was dead.
