Love Grows Slowly

You of the winter eye

Hoar frost and crab tree

Eyelids of ice, you lie

Beside and beyond me.

 

Cold are the storms of you

That scatter your needings,

Deep are the wells you fill

With other men's readings.

 

Leaving me wait for grace

And the autumn, its crowning,

Deep in the golden leaves

Here am I - drowning!

 

Playing that Patience, time...

That measures us only,

Whisper the one true line -

Love grows slowly.

 

David Lewis Paget