The Spirit Wooed

A poem by Philip Larkin

Once I believed in you,
And then you came,
Unquestionably new, as fame
Had said you were. But that was long ago.

You launched no argument,
Yet I obeyed,
Straightaway, the instrument you played
Distant Down sidestreets, keeping different time,

And never questioned what
You fascinate
In me; if good or not, the state
You pressed towards. There was no need to know.

Grave pristine absolutes
Walked in my mind:
So that I was not mute, or blind,
As years before or since. My only crime

Was holding you too dear.
Was that the cause
You daily came less near—a pause
Longer than life, if you decide it so?