Only a Smile

No butterfly whose frugal fare
Is breath of heliotrope and clove,
And other trifles light as air,
Could live on less than doth my love.

That childlike smile that comes and goes
About your gracious lips and eyes,
Hath all the sweetness of the rose,
Which feeds the freckled butterflies.

I feed my love on smiles, and yet
Sometimes I ask, with tears of woe,
How had it been if we had met,
If you had met me long ago,

Before the fast, defacing years
Had made all ill that once was well?
Ah, then your smiling breeds such tears
As Tantalus may weep in hell.