“‘Then, more kisses!’—‘Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few!’”

For Poetry Monday:

The Happy Night, J. C. Squire

I have loved to-night; from love’s last bordering steep
    I have fallen at last with joy and forgotten the shore;
    I have known my love to-night as never before,
I have flung myself in the deep, and drawn from the deep,
And kissed her lightly, and left my beloved to sleep.
    And now I sit in the night and my heart is still:
    Strong and secure; there is nothing that’s left to will,
There is nothing to win but only a thing to keep.

And I look to-night, completed and not afraid,
    Into the windy dark where shines no light;
And care not at all though the darkness never should fade,
    Nor fear that death should suddenly come to-night.
Knowing my last would be surely my bravest breath,
I am happy to-night: I have laughed to-night at death.


Squire (1884-1958) was an influential literary editor and critic, as well as Georgian poet. This was written in 1919, and first published in his 1921 collection Poems: Second Series, which despite the title was nowhere near his second collection of poetry.

---L.

Subject quote from A Toccata of Galuppi’s, Robert Browning.