Can you identify a poem from only the tiniest shred of text I remember?

[jaynehater]

Heard a poem as a teenager (no audible groans, I'm sensitive) I know I liked it, but all that remains by way of memory are the words :

'Like a moth to a flame
Till there is naught left to do but to die'

There could be a line in between those two - who knows, I just remember the moth, the flame, and the dying, and at seventeen that's all you want from poetry, really, isn't it? (Maybe not the moths - I wasn't a Goth or anything)

Anyway, if anyone more learned than me can assist I would be eternally grateful as it's niggled for some time, and occasional googles and furtive swipes through the anthologies in Waterstones have yielded nothing.

Hmmm... I had a quick google, and found this and these... one of them?

Blake?

Also Olivis Newton John Lyrics

NLNN - do you intend to respond to my post on the other thread? Am trying to apologise for upsetting you.

This has some of the same sort of atmosphere as your fragment ... it's Arthur Symons, ever so fin de siecle

I AM the torch, she saith, and what to me
If the moth die of me? I am the flame
Of Beauty, and I burn that all may see
Beauty, and I have neither joy nor shame,
But live with that clear light of perfect fire
Which is to men the death of their desire.

I am Yseult and Helen, I have seen
Troy burn, and the most loving knight lie dead.
The world has been my mirror, time has been
My breath upon the glass; and men have said,
Age after age, in rapture and despair,
Love's poor few words, before my image there.

I live, and am immortal; in my eyes
The sorrow of the world, and on my lips
The joy of life, mingle to make me wise;
Yet now the day is darkened with eclipse:
Who is there still lives for beauty? Still am I
The torch, but where's the moth that still dares die?

The Poetry Library on the South Bank in London has a poem-hunters' site - you post your words & people try to find it for you. It used to be done by tiny scraps of paper being pinned up to a lonely noticeboard on the fifth floor of a public building - much cosier now with a website but less magical somehow

Well done. Good spot.

Oooh twinkle! Just read.

I can respond there if you wish or can just say here that I am fine and appreciate your response. I understand your feelings and often feel the same about certain topics. I just wasn't up for that debate when my post in that specific thread was quite a personal response to a request for personal perspectives.

I hope you see that I wasn't making comparisons, good or bad, between SAHMs or SAHds or the relative hard work of either role.

Imo both parents who work in the home and those that work outside of it do a hard job, they are just different. My exdp probably thinks he got a good deal, he just doesn't realise he didn't! (Having rarely worked in the traditional sense)
Hijack over

[hijack continues - last one I promise]

I wasn't after a debate either NLNN. It was just a bit of a shock seeing such a virulent response to quite an innocent thread that was aimed at SAHD's (which I'm not either, admittedly). Anyhow, no harm done hopefully. I truly don't know you're background but I'm very sorry for any sh*t you've had to go through. Hope to meet again under friendlier circumstances.

[hijack over]