Friendship After Love

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

After the fierce midsummer all ablaze

   Has burned itself to ashes, and expires

   In the intensity of its own fires,

There come the mellow, mild, St. Martin days

Crowned with the calms of peace, but sad with haze.

   So after love has led us, till he tires

   Of his own throes, and torments, and desires,

Comes large-eyed friendship: with a restful gaze,

He beckons us to follow, and across

   Cool verdant vales we wander free from care.

   Is it a touch of frost lies in the air?

Why are we haunted with a sense of loss?

We do not wish the pain back, or the heat;

And yet, and yet, these days are incomplete.