Love's Year Poem by Jan Struther

LOVE, to be sweetest, should keep pace with the year:
Be new in spring, wild, uncertain and tender,
Make soul sing, heart ache with wonder
And exquisite despair;
Grow hot and sure with summer, deepen and strengthen
To a fiercer beauty
As dews fall heavy
And days lengthen;
In autumn, ripen and mellow
To friendship's grain;
Die without pain,
And leave a richer heart, heart that lies fallow
All winter, till another love, another spring.