Like saints in heaven, recalling sorrow
With a sense of relief and delight,
I now smile when I think of you—
A memory of beauty. Hell. Night.
It doesn’t matter what I do,
Or what is done to me tomorrow.
Leaving you behind, I leave behind all sorrow.
Grand expense my verses took!
I would have had revenge in every book
Grave and rich, were my publisher to pay.
People would have seen you. But there was another way.
I did not publish you. Instead, my cost
Is elegiac sweetness, crushed by all that’s lost.
The saints in heaven, immune to sorrow,
Never knew you. And thanks to you
I’ll love more than saints tomorrow.