His Love was Burned Away [poem by John Shaw Neilson]

[Editor: This poem by John Shaw Neilson was published in Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson (1934).]

His Love was Burned Away

She seemed as one who looks upon
a hill and cannot climb . . .
The long days burned her: she was faint
and white at Christmas-time.

Her lover like a bold spider
spun lovewebs night and day;
The sunlight knew no pity . . . still
it burned her blood away.

She died ere yet the butterflies
knew all her dreamings thin,
She died a blossom penniless
of honeythirst within.

He talks into the barren night
that it might hear him pray,
Because it was the long sunlight
that burned his love away.

He looks as one who sees too far
and findeth all things dim;
I sometimes think that the deep night
may blindly pity him.

He will not love the slow delight
that tells the birth of day,
Because it was the long sunshine
that stole his love away.

He talks into the heavy night;
it laughs not as the day;
It dances not as the sunlight
That stole his love away.

Source:
John Shaw Neilson (editor: R. H. Croll), Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson, Melbourne: Lothian Publishing Company, 1934 [May 1949 reprint], pages 86-87