Classic Poem

There are three pines about the door,
No bird will light in save the crow,
Or the chill-hearted monkish owl,
Whose eyes peer out beneath his cowl.

Ascetic through the silent night
He keeps it; while the scornful crow
Its desolation keeps by day—
Its gloom … where passion once held sway.

And blood-guilt is the cause men give
Of its forsakenness and rack:
Love here once cut its own white throat;
And Nature thus has taken note.

And yet for no unfaithfulness
Or perfidy did the two die.
But so dull were they, each preferred
Murder at last to make a third.

For all was solitude—with naught
To save love from its own sick self.
Fearful was either of a friend—
Lest ennui for but one should end.

So the deed fell: and the lone house
Seems now by one sole caution stirred:
‘Two cannot love who love no third,
Or live on love's one sating word.’