Poem by Rupert Chawner Brooke

Success

   I think if you had loved me when I wanted;
    If I'd looked up one day, and seen your eyes,
   And found my wild sick blasphemous prayer granted,
    And your brown face, that's full of pity and wise,
   Flushed suddenly; the white godhead in new fear
    Intolerably so struggling, and so shamed;
   Most holy and far, if you'd come all too near,
    If earth had seen Earth's lordliest wild limbs tamed,
   Shaken, and trapped, and shivering, for MY touch --
    Myself should I have slain? or that foul you?
   But this the strange gods, who had given so much,
    To have seen and known you, this they might not do.
   One last shame's spared me, one black word's unspoken;
    And I'm alone; and you have not awoken.

1. The Great Lover
2. The Jolly Company
3. Song (All suddenly the wind comes soft)
4. On the Death of Smet-Smet, the Hippopotamus-Goddess
5. Fragment on Painters

Edgar Guest Success ("I hold no dream of fortune vast")

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