Poem by Mathilde Blind

Only a Smile

No butterfly whose frugal fare
    Is breath of heliotrope and clove,
And other trifles light as air,
    Could live on less than doth my love.

That childlike smile that comes and goes
    About your gracious lips and eyes,
Hath all the sweetness of the rose,
    Which feeds the freckled butterflies.

I feed my love on smiles, and yet
    Sometimes I ask, with tears of woe,
How had it been if we had met,
    If you had met me long ago,

Before the fast, defacing years
    Had made all ill that once was well?
Ah, then your smiling breeds such tears
    As Tantalus may weep in hell.

1. Love-Trilogy
2. Mourning Women
3. The Desert
4. Once We Played
5. I Planted a Rose Tree

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