The Ivy Crown

The whole process is a lie, unless, crowned by excess, It break forcefully, one way or another, from its confinement— or find a deeper well. Antony and Cleopatra were right; they have shown the way. I love you or I do not live at all. Daffodil time is past. This is summer, summer! the heart says, and not even the full of it. No doubts are permitted— though they will come and may before our time overwhelm us. We are only mortal but being mortal can defy our fate. We may by an outside chance even win! We do not look to see jonquils and violets come again but there are, still, the roses!

Romance has no part in it. The business of love is cruelty which, by our wills, we transform to live together. It has its seasons, for and against, whatever the heart fumbles in the dark to assert toward the end of May. Just as the nature of briars is to tear flesh, I have proceeded through them. Keep the briars out, they say. You cannot live and keep free of briars. Children pick flowers. Let them. Though having them in hand they have no further use for them but leave them crumpled at the curb's edge.

At our age the imagination across the sorry facts lifts us to make roses stand before thorns. Sure love is cruel and selfish and totally obtuse— at least, blinded by the light, young love is. But we are older, I to love and you to be loved, we have, no matter how, by our wills survived to keep the jeweled prize always at our finger tips. We will it so and so it is past all accident. by William Carlos Williams