When Autumn Yellows All The Leaves

 

I must not tell how dear you are to me.

It is unknown, a secret from myself

Who should know best. I would not if I could

Expose the meaning of such a mystery

I loved you then, when love was Spring, and May.

Eternity is here and now, I thought;

The pure and perfect moment briefly caught

As in your arms, but still a child, I lay.

Loved you when summer deepened into June

And those fair, wild, ideal dreams of youth

Were true yet dangerous and half unreal

As when Endymion kissed the mateless moon.

But now when autumn yellows all the leaves

And thirty seasons mellow our long love,

How rooted, how secure, how strong, how rich,

How full the barn that holds our garnered sheaves!

- Vita Sackville-West, poem to her husband Harold Nicholson. From: "Portrait of a Marriage" by Nigel Nicholson

Portrait: Vita with red hat by William Strang (1859-1921)