Explore "What Shall We Do?" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Here now forevermore our lives must part. / My path leads there, and yours another way. / What shall we do with this fond love, dear heart? / It grows a heavier burden day by day.
Hide it? In all earth's caverns, void and vast, / There is not room enough to hide it, dear; / Not even the mighty storehouse of the past / Could cover it from our own eyes, I fear.
Drown it? Why, were the contents of each ocean / Merged into one great sea, too shallow then / Would be its waters to sink this emotion / So deep it could not rise to life again.
Burn it? In all the furnace flames below, / It would not in a thousand years expire. / Nay! it would thrive, exult, expand, and grow, / For from its very birth it fed on fire.
Starve it? Yes, yes, that is the only way. / Give it no food, of glance, or word, or sigh; / No memories, even, of any bygone day; / No crumbs of vain regrets -- so let it die.