An old flavour

An old friend's status message on facebook coupled with a lazy summer afternoon, chilled milk shake and the need to keep myself from dozing away slipped my fingers into the sepia pages of an old poetry book, that Father Brandon had sent me from the shores of Ireland in an attempt to kindle faith in an Almighty, if not a religion ;) The book had a poem that spoke with an unperturbed clarity that I've always adored. Its a poem composed by Christina Rossetti- a supposedly devout High Anglican to whom religion meant a world.

Promise me no promises,
So will I not promise you:
Keep we both our liberties,
Never false and never true:
Let us hold the die uncast,
Free to come as free to go:
For I cannot know your past,
And of mine what can you know?

You, so warm, may once have been
Warmer towards another one:
I, so cold, may once have seen
Sunlight, once have felt the sun:
Who shall show us if it was
Thus indeed in time of old?
Fades the image from the glass,
And the fortune is not told.

If you promised, you might grieve
For lost liberty again:
If I promised, I believe
I should fret to break the chain.
Let us be the friends we were,
Nothing more but nothing less:
Many thrive on frugal fare
Who would perish of excess