Monument

I never wrote you a love song
Somehow words could not express what I needed to say.
And so I never wrote you a love song
And now its much, much too late ‘cause you’ve gone away

But I will build this monument
To remember all the love we once had
And I’ll close my eyes and make it how it used to be
I swear I never stopped loving you with everything I am
And it hurts so much to think you stopped loving me
You stopped loving me…

So I wish I’d had written you a love song
And somehow you understood what it feels to be me
Because the Angel loves the sprite forever
And does it unconditionally

But I will build this monument
To remember all the love we once had
And I’ll close my eyes and make it how it used to be
I swear I never stopped loving you with everything I am
And it hurts so much to think you stopped loving me
You stopped loving me…

(excerpt from La Belle Dame Sans Merci by W.B. Keats – 1819)

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful–a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said–
“I love thee true.”

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep
And there I dreamed–ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dreamed
On the cold hill’s side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried–“La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.

And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.