Oh, the great winds swept, and the great sun spoke,
And his great soul said what’s true,
“Platonic love’s for a cowardly bloke,
But is not the love for you.

“A love that is only songs and flowers,
Yet has not guts for an act,
Will waste to naught your days and hours
And never become a fact.

“To yearn and pine for a dream that seems
An impossible dream to thee,
Will give you only a lost star’s beams,
Faint ghost of reality.

“For Plato held that the really real
Was beyond our grasp to hold,
That the greater truth was a dream’s ideal
Slight formed in spirit mold.

“But he was wrong, turned his back on sense,
Cut mind in two. Abstract he did not see
Was made from everyday sense
In grasped facts of reality.

“The things you touch and see and smell
‘False shadows are,’ he said,
‘While dreams you dream are really swell,
Though made up in your head.’

“But true love’s not a shadow poor
Which you can never clasp;
It is my light that gives you more,
Sky’s breath that blows you past.

“Platonic love is a loser’s love,
With self-abuse its aim;
Can only yearn for a gleam above
And makes of love a game.”