Classic Poem

I spend my days and nights with those I love:
I pass without leave or hindrance into the nooks and corners of human hearts:
I who mostly rejected yet do not reject myself — who am in great favor with myself:
I go my rounds collecting my fee, the fee of love — making my claims so big:
Remitting no tax: demanding the last cent — the final drop of blood:
Hungry to eat and thirsty to drink the sure feast that may be set:
Turning aside into no minor currents but keeping to the main stream,
Caring for nothing else, indifferent to rewards — indifferent to results good or bad,
Not eager about fame, about being seen — only eager about love:
Nestling seedlike in the ground producing the flowers,
Falling as rain from the clouds, flowing as rivers from the hills, creating the sea:
I, going among men, passing everything by but love, seeing only love:
Blind to the great houses, blind to the great men, blind to money and show —
My eyes shut to them, unconscious of them: my eyes open to love, conscious alone of love:
Pitiless to those who possessing fortunes come without love, turning them away,
Pitiful to those who possessing nothing come with love, taking them in my arms:
Throwing all of me open to all of them without restraint:
Asking no returns — willing to love: not asking that they love me: asking only that they love:
Satisfied with seeing love about me, seeing it in men, seeing it in deeds, loosened in the air:
Not asking love to look at me or enthrone me — to fix any honor on me:
Only too joyful to see love at work, only too well repaid, standing out of sight, seeing love responding to love —
As life answers the sun, coming to proof in harvests and people,
Love so answering to life, coming to proof in mercies and ameliorations.

They fished his dead body out of the river: they said he died for love:
He had gone his limit: life was useless to him: he was disappointed in love:
It seemed to me different: it seemed to me he died for want of love:
It seemed to me different: it seemed to me love was disappointed in him.
What have you got to do with love anyhow except to love?
When you blow your brains out for love dont you blow love out with your brains?
When you murder the girl you love because she does not love you, have you really murdered the girl?
It seems to me different: you have not murdered the girl: the girl lives: you have murdered love
The lovers quarrel: they separate with bitter accusations: love is no longer love, they say:
It seems to me different: love is more love than ever: love may now taste its sweetest fruit.
It is easy enough to love when you are loved, but to love when you are not loved — that is a step beyond.
Some one dearest to you dies: you grieve — die: heartbroken: you, so innocent, so loyal:
It seems to me different: you throw life away after death: you, so guilty, so traitorous.
To give up because another gives up is no reason at all: it is in place of a reason;
Though all the rest retreat, though you stand alone, though no ally is left to call upon — well, you may still love:
And the main question is not whether people give you up but whether you give people up:
And when I look at the despoiled bodies of men and women who throw themselves away for love I am discontented:
I say to despairers who throw themselves away for love: it would have been better evidence of love if you had saved yourselves for love
It seems to me different: love cant be put into a grave: love is what the grave spares:
You who killed your friend because you loved him did not love your friend — you only loved a shadow thrown on the ground:
And loving the shadow of anything is not enough — only loving love is enough: love's unspotted light: no less:
And you who love even in the loss of love never destroy life in others or yourself for love:
No: you give others, yourself, extra reasons for living — reasons supreme above all reasons for ceaseless futures
That's how it all seems different to me: how love refuses to feed death — how love feeds only life, prodigally, without end:
That's how it all seems different to me: how love takes no revenges and buys and sells no one: how love only loves and scorns reward:
That's how it all seems different to me: how love standing without a companion like a tree in a desert still finds reasons for loving.

It is beautiful to love those who care for you and dream of you and call you comrade:
It is more beautiful to love those who are in doubt about you — who do not want your love:
If a man expects pay for love he has to be wary how he loves and whom he trusts:
I am heedless about love because I never charge my love up against you:
I do not mind making mistakes: what is a mistake or two against all the love I contain?
The whole earth is not too big for me to love in: and all the stars — they are not too big:
Nothing exhausts my love: I go with it wherever men are and things are, whether there is excuse for love or no excuse for love:
(Is there any world anywhere or any thing in any world anywhere in which there is no excuse for love?):
All the people are not too many for me to love with: all the people of all worlds: they are not too many:
I do not run out of love: it would take more than all the globes in space to drain me dry:
I spend my days and nights with those I love.