Love is Not All

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again;

Love cannot fill the thickening plot of death; I know that ghosts are tied to nothing by taut threads; But, if I were lost, and love was by my side— Would she concede to life—this bear so needy

Like a tree crooked, a stupid mother?
But, love is not all, for we will die Like lovers, like leaves on the unkind earth.

That are lost to our greed in autumn’s breath.

Then let men plead, let them speak And muse, In and out and gasp to the yield of love. As the brook which sings against my door.

• Edna St Vincent Millay