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The Debt
When I am dead and you gather up my poems,
Put them all in, all those that speak of you,
Those that glanced at you in sundry disguises,
Ariadne, Daphne and the nameless nymph,
The flower-bright queen who ruled a king in China,
And the country-girl that early lost her love.
Bind up with them the frank and honest sonnets,
The open songs, the unashamed odes,
That spoke straight to you and told that I loved you,
Described your beauty or called you by name.
These are not ours ; for what I took of beauty
Belongs to our fellows for whom I write.
The traces I have left on hill-top and valley
Were made of the world and belong to the world ;
But more than half of the loveliness I captured