Amor Vincit Poem by Anna Johnston MacManus

A rush of wings upon the air, while here you sit and spin–
Give over wailing, O sad heart, and let the Summer in!
Love knocks without your guarded gate, your fire is burning red–
'I cannot let him in,' she wept, 'because of Love that's dead.'

His wings are heavy with the rain, his curls are tempest-tossed,
He bears fair gifts to compensate for all the joy's you've lost;
Your silent house hath need of him, your lonely ingleside–
'I gave Love shelter once,' she said, 'for this my heart hath died.'

'But if I be the Love of old,' uprose his pleading sweet,
'Say might I then have welcoming, and nestle at your feet?
I only slept, uncared, unsought, beneath the stress of tears,
And ashes of remembrance, piled by the passing years.

'Yet Love outlives–if Love be true–aught born of blind disdain,
Comes in the gladness of the Spring, and seeks his own again–
Aught born of wrath when speech rings free and tried souls drift afar–
So Love be true, his benison can heal the deepest scar.

'Then let me in'–Her mournful eyes glow with their vanished grace
To see his drifted locks of gold, the glory on his face.
There's bloom in desert-lands to-day, there's singing in the sky,
Since Love remembered one sad heart, and cast his dreaming by.