Since that I may not have
Love on this side the grave,
Let me imagine Love.
Since not mine is the bliss
Of ‘claspt hands and lips that kiss,’
Let me in dreams it prove.
What tho’ as the years roll
No soul shall melt to my soul,
Let me conceive such thing;
Tho’ never shall entwine
Loving arms around mine
Let dreams caresses bring.
To live–it is my doom–
Lonely as in a tomb,
This cross on me was laid;
My God, I know not why;
Here in the dark I lie,
Lonely, yet not afraid.
It has seemed good to Thee
Still to withhold the key
Which opes the way to men;
I am shut in alone,
I make not any moan,
Thy ways are past my ken.
Yet grant me this, to find
The sweetness in my mind
Which I must still forego;
Great God which art above,
Grant me to image Love,–
The bliss without the woe.
Amy Levy (1861 – 1889) was a Victorian era poetess and prose author who wrote in English in the second half of the 19th century, a Jewess, she also wrote on feminist and Jewish themes. She suffered from an acute depression, was likely a lesbian, and is now remembered as a acquaintance of Oscar Wilde. The poetess exterminated herself, that is committed suicide, by inhaling carbon monoxide at her beloved parents’ home. She was the first Jewess to be cremated in England and her ashes are burried in Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery in London.