Love is like dew
On lilacs at dawn:
Comes the swift sun
And the dew is gone.
Love is like star-light
In the sky at morn:
Star-light that dies
When day is born.
Love is like perfume
In the heart of a rose:
The flower withers,
The perfume goes–
Love is no more
Than the breath of a rose,
No more
Than the breath of a rose.

(first published in Hughes’s autobiography, The Big Sea, 1940)