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Later Rue the Morning

How brighter shines the night than darker day?
Or flowers bloom less glorious than stone?
Or whippoorwill at eve sounds less alone
Than lover who with lover is at play?
How damper than the dew is desert sand?
Or deeper than the sea runs mountain brook?
How truer be the vows which we forsook
In favor of this greater flame by Cupid's arrow fanned
Than the mewing of the oxen or the roaring of the pup?
How does your leaving, which stirs such disarray
Of hearts, and bids us bear our mutual dismay,
Seem fairer than the filling of our love's poor-portioned cup?

I would that I could isolate that day
And dismiss it from the calendar in hate!
Or rather, we had never met too late
Than, having met, then have you go away.
Our love, I know, must frustrate ever stay
Lest, loving, we so grievously should err
As to enact some foolish dream whose foundation is the air
And later rue the morning of that sun-anointed day.

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