Isolation

When your lips seek my lips they bring
That sorrowful and outcast thing
My heart home from its wandering.

There ere your lips have loosed their hold,
I feel my heart’s heat growing cold,
And my heart shivers and grows old.

When your lips leave my lips, again
I feel the old doubt and the old pain
Tighten about me like a chain.

After the pain, after the doubt,
A lonely darkness winds about
My soul like death, and shuts you out.


Arthur Symons