A favourite poem for Valentine's Day...

THE FOREBODING

Looking by chance in at the open window

            I saw my own self seated in his chair

With gaze abstracted, furrowed forehead,

            Unkempt hair.

I thought that I had suddenly come to die,

            That to a cold corpse this was my farewell,

Until the pen moved slowly on the paper

            And tears fell.

He had written a name, yours, in printed letters

            One word on which bemusedly to pore:

No protest, no desire, your naked name,

            Nothing more.

Would it be tomorrow, would it be next year?

            But the vision was not false, this much I knew;

And I turned angrily from the open window

            Aghast at you.

Why never a warning, either by speech or look,

            That the love you cruelly gave me could not last?

Already it was too late: the bait swallowed,

            The hook fast.

                      Robert Graves