[Editor: This poem by Mary E. Fullerton was published in Moles Do So Little with Their Privacy: Poems (1942).]
Lovers
To be unloved brings sweet relief:
The strong adoring eyes
Play the eternal thief
With the soul’s fit disguise.
He will not sleep, and let be drawn
The screen of thy soul’s ark;
They keep, those lidless eyes,
Thy sanctuary stark.
God, when he made each separate
Unfashioned his own act,
Giving the lover eyes,
So his love’s soul be sacked.
To be unloved gives sweet relief;
The one integrity
Of soul is to be lone,
Inviolate, and free.
Published in:
E, Moles Do So Little with Their Privacy: Poems, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1942 [“E” was a pseudonym used by Mary Fullerton]
Also published in:
T. Inglis Moore (editor), From the Ballads to Brennan, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1964, p. 194
Jennifer Strauss (editor), The Oxford Book of Australian Love Poems, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1997 (c1993), p. 34
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