What is This Thing?

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Love's not Love at all if by compass wind

Of his acerbic words can be dispersed

And turned from rightful course and you rescind

The breathy tones that in my days immersed

I felt that fortune found for me reserved

Amidst the clamor constancy so grand

There breathes a reason to believe deserved

A life has more than time to hold its hand.

And love's not love that by time or trial finds plain

The symphony of minor keys which played

Each day to bathe the soul in raptured pain

Or hears instead a wonted tune belayed.

You're worth the fight to hold the bound degree

If just to hear the chords that speak to me.

What is This Thing?  - The Courage of Intimacy by Keith Ainsworth                                                                                                                                                      42