Chapter 24
The Chilterns by Rupert Brooke Read for the Bravaakstarrt org by Anusha Ayyar Your hands, my dear, adorable, your lips of tenderness. Oh, I have loved you faithfully and well, three years or a bit less. It wasn't a success.
Thank God that's done, and I'll take the road, quit of my youth, and you, the Roman road to Wendover by Tring and Lily Hoo as a free man may do. For youth goes over, the joys that fly, the tears that follow fast, and the dirtiest things we do must lie, forgotten at the last. Even love goes past.
What's left behind I shall not find, the splendour and the pain, the splash of sun, the shouting wind, and the brave sting of rain. I may not meet again, but the years that take the best away give something in the end, and a better friend than love have they, for none to mar or mend that have themselves to friend. I shall desire and I shall find the best of my desires, the autumn road, the mellow wind
that soothes the darkening shires, and laughter and infires, white mist about the black hedge rose, the slumbering midland plain, the silence where the clover grows, and the dead leaves in the lane, certainly these remain. And I shall find some girl perhaps, and a better one than you, with eyes as wise but kindlier, and lips as soft but true.
And I dare say she will do.
