90109: 'Stunned by their life's explosion . . .'

Stunned by their life's explosion into love
Some men stay deaf and dizzy ever after,
And blindly through the press they grope or shove,
Nor heed they more of sorrowing or laughter.
And others, having fixed their hope above,
Chastened and maimed by bitter chastity,
Grow to forget spring flowers, and why the dove
Makes music with her fellow, endlessly.
Ah! pity these were told not that their thirsts
Are slaked nor by priest's wine nor lust's outbursts,
But Poesy. They, knowing Verse to be
God's soothest answer to all passion's plea,
And loving beauties writ and wrought of art,
Might yet have kept a whole and splendid heart.

Revised either at Craiglockhart in October-November 1917, or at Scarborough between November 1917 and January 1918, having been drafted some time earlier" (Stallworthy, vol. 1 p. 119)