The Sunset Sonnet

O Love

I have long thought

That thou'd departed

This lonely sphere

Once called my heart

Departed by the door

That opens only once

For each peasant and king

And closes on the charnel steps

And yet even now 

In night's velvet embrace 

With soft whisper you approach

On feather tips so assured 

What can I say now?

Shall I cast thee out?

Now at the moment when 

Thy blossoms finally have 

Broken through the ice

So frigid and with torpidless kiss

Breathed by Boriads of my past

Enlocked beneath their hold

So striving long

Bitterness then born 

And finally thou breaketh forth 

And Spring's rosey breath doth kiss

Sweetness once more in the air 

A song so long now past

When minutes count as days 

But now 

Now thou hath returned 

The morning rose-tainted

Has touched the midday mark 

And yet also I know too well

Your return is but a breath

So brief, and then the dusk 

Were I but some hapless fool

To wander ever in those shores 

Where twilight never dares 

To kiss the unfailing noon 

Where I able in those arts 

Favored as patriarchs of old

To command and stop the descent 

And make the sun stand ever still
At my commands

But no artifice or craft have I

Save these poor and fallow words

So shall I trap thee in my mind

Distill thy steps within a page

And make a mark thy prisonkeep

No more, no more I beg 

Love thou art my jailer

Not mine to keep

Ever long, O Sweet Torturer of my soul

In hours deep thy marks were set

And I here try my futile sleep

Knowing full well thy brand is met

And shall I erase the sorrow dear

No, no come now like the flood

And rise to bury my heart and soul in twain

Let those depths, galleon-plowed 

Be my ever enclosing shroud

Shall Love's dry sorrow come 

And now bring the dagger and the vial

Pay thy forty ducats

And meet thy timeless end

For no happy dagger my sheath will find

Now only
Now, Love I know 

Oh how I do know

That thou art here 

And walk the circles of this world

And have touched this humble poet

And have kissed his tears 

That none shall ever know

He has surely found his knees 

For it is on them thou doth leave him

Be gentle, O Love

As thy dusk approaches him

No commands left in this mouth

A dry cavern to thy dance 

But let thy departure be swift

Let the strings be cut all at once

No tearing and unwinding seams

Bring all thy darkest sorrow

And then thy sweetest dreams

For Love I have known thee

In the midnight hour thy kiss

Has lingered long upon my lips

Have wet my cheeks 

With thy fonts of salt

And traced thy paths within my mind

I know that darkest night

And the wings of cold despair

Unfold to herald the dawn

Of the new day untouched yet by cold

So I shall gladly kiss this dusk farewell

And when midnight's shroud is pulled tight

I shall spread the wings of hope

And learn to sail the star filled night

Into that violet morn

And when the last star turns above the hills

Anon the daybreak shines 

I shall follow in its dance 

And look once more for thee, O Love 

But now

While the hour has grown old

I'll raise a toast to what I know

I toast all women, for in thy rank is she

Who Love next shall dawn for me

And I toast thee, O Love 

For binging her unto me 

Even if only for a season it be

And I toast thee, Master Shakespeare

For it is thanks to thy quill

That we poor poets learned to love

And after heartbreak keep loving still

The dusk is here now

And night follows soon

The daybreak also

And then the sun anon