best at F11
Sonnets
Poet Lariat
LOVE BOTH BINDS AND SETS ONE FREE
Love both binds and sets one free
clasps to its bosom, sends afar
consoles the weakness, lets strength be
prays for peace but risks a war.
For Love confers the highest gift,
Itself: the soul’s most welcome guest.
yet Love invites the greatest rift
if love becomes oneself obsessed.
Receiving Love so infinite
uplifts one to the heights of heaven,
tempers steel, makes darkness bright,
confers the moral strength of seven!
Yet man misreads the reason for his strength
finds within himself the height and depth and length.
Poems from the Eighth Decade
Copyright © Harold Macdonald 2004
used with permission