Love, The Destroyer
LOVE is a Fire;
Nor Shame nor Pride can well withstand Desire.
“For what are they,” we cry, “that they should dare
To keep, O Love, the haughty look they wear?
Nay, burn the victims, O thou sacred Fire,
That with their death thou mayst but flame the higher.
Let them feel once the fierceness of thy breath,
And make thee still more beauteous with their death.”
Love is a Fire;
But ah, how short-lived is the flame Desire!
Love, having burnt whatever once we cherished,
And blackened all things else, itself hath perished.
And now alone in gathering night we stand,
Ashes and ruin stretch on either hand;
Yet while we mourn, our sad hearts whisper low:
“We served the mightiest God that man can know.”
Anne Reeve Aldrich.