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A Prelude For Contemporary Lovers

True constancy in love's a sport
For poets to report.
They act it out in mind,
For frailty's all the facts can find.
And who will not at last be forced
To lose an image or be lost?
What worlds are his that won't be taught
That even an evil fact's caught
But fancy fickle and wild
Is the random poet's child?

Can thought be separate from the act?
If thought's befooled by fact.
Is fancy fool to thought?
If there's no worth where worth is sought.
These contraries one life must hold;
Now fancy fair for truths untold
Must make a logic living lacked
And test a world no worlds enact,
Making poet child
And all his visions wild.

Can I love and yet lack sense?
Lust's the recompense.
Is lust the soul of love?
Sense at last knows no remove.
So if she still must loving be
She's constant to two, never to me;
But going next in sad pretence,
She's fickle twice to save offence
And constancy's defiled
To gain what it reviled.

Yet, to me she's heaven and earth,
A coinage and a worth,
The vision that abounds
Where tell-tale fancy fact confounds,
And delight's half-heart remorse
That fact itself's the proof of loss.
But that she's love, 'tween heaven and earth
Charming fact with worth,
Tells—oh sweetly—fancy's child
Is she, that heaven and earth exiled.

True constancy. What hope there lies,
What humour sure replies.
Here are my heart and soul,
But head's the third that keeps them whole.
How can I gaily break my heart

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To spread sad truth o'er every part?
Oh how shall I weep at truth's demise,
That grants glad love mere vision's prize,
Weep for love that smiled,
By constancy beguiled.

P. Wilson