"Infidelity", a poem by Louis Untermeyer.

Buds on a tree by the Scioto River in Dublin, Ohio.

You have not conquered me—it is the surge

   Of love itself that beats against my will;

It is the sting of conflict, the old urge

   That calls me still.

 

It is not you I love—it is the form

   And shadow of all lovers who have died

That gives you all the freshness of a warm

   And unfamiliar bride.

 

It is your name I breathe, your hands I seek;

   It will be you when you are gone.

And yet the dream, the name I never speak,

   Is that that lures me on.

 

It is the golden summons, the bright wave

   Of banners calling me anew;

It is all beauty, perilous and grave—

   It is not you.

I love this poem for the way Untermeyer reveals the hope at the heart of infidelity- the strange sparkle of an unrealized dream, the way it becomes possible to cherish a fantasy, or its mere possibility. A love poem to a character of our invention. Compelling and destructive.