Edith Nesbit

Love and Knowledge

THOUGH you and I so long have been so near--
    Have felt each other's heart-beats hour by hour,
    Have watered, plucked, and trampled passion's flower,
Have known so many days so very dear--
Yet still through every hour of every year
    We have sought to win and failed to win the dower
    Of perfect insight, and to gain the power
To see what we are, and not what we appear.

Yet you desire such knowledge--would possess,
    You say, completion of love; if that were won
    --Ah! by it might not haply be undone
    The little measure of joy we knew before?
    Though we should swear we loved each other more,
How surely we should love each other less!