SONNET TO THE PORTUGUESE
After E.B.Browning

And canst thou love me? Let it be for naught
That from my halting pen the world may gain:
A creature might forget uncertain pain
Who, with thy love, the olive leaf had bought.
For the long years of solitary thought
Would cease to hammer in his whirling brain,
To lose thereby the lifelong love he sought.


Love not his faults, whose virtues are too few
To weigh the scales of judgment to the line,
But love that fault which, being virtue too,
May ever grow if fed by love of thine:
If thou canst love me, canst thou love me then
As one who cannot lose his faith in men?


JMT 1946