First Love
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
All my ways she wove of light,
Wove them all alive,
Made them warm and beauty bright…
So the shining, ambient air
Clothes the golden waters where
The pearl fishers dive.
When she wept and begged a kiss
Very close I’d hold her,
Oh I know so well in this
Fine, fierce joy of memory
She was very young like me
Tho half an aeon older.
Once she kissed me very long,
Tip-toed out the door,
Left me, took her light along,
Faded as a music fades…
Then I saw the changing shades,
Color-blind no more.
Note
After the initial publication in Nassau Lit, the poem was re-published in collection: Van Dyke, Henry, ed. A Book of Princeton verse II. 1919. Princeton, Princeton University press [1919].
And see the revised version of this poem in The Notebooks, J, entry 858.
Published in Nassau Literary Magazine magazine (February 1919).
Not illustrated.