many of course, on the "poems I like" dance card - but here's one I think of, when I think about the notion that if you've had one big passion that doesn't end in broken glass, then it's been a good run... Love Is Not All Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay