I Thought, Before My Sunlit Twentieth Year

I thought, before my sunlit twentieth year,
That I knew Love, and Death that goes with it;
And my young broken heart in little songs,
Dew-like, I poured, and waited for my end
Wildly - and waited - being then nineteen.
I walked a little longer on my way,
Alive, 'gainst expectation and desire,
And, being then past twenty, I beheld
The face of all the faces of the world
Dewily opening on its stem for me.
Ah! so it seemed, and, each succeeding year,
Thus hath some woman blossom of the divine
Flowered in my path, and made a frail delay
In my true journey - to my home in thee.

October 27, 1911.

Richard Le Gallienne

Richard Le Gallienne was an English author and poet born on January 20, 1866. Known for his lyrical poetry, he was a key figure in the literary circles of the fin de siècle. He contributed to the literary magazine 'The Yellow Book' and was involved with the Rhymers' Club, an influential group of London-based poets. His works often explored themes of beauty, love, and nature. His influence extended to both sides of the Atlantic, and he spent the latter part of his life in the United States, where he continued to write until his death on September 15, 1947.

Richard Le Gallienne

Sunset In The City

Richard Le Gallienne, Simple Poetry

Paris Day By Day: A Familiar Epistle - (To Mrs. Henry Harland[1])

Richard Le Gallienne, Simple Poetry

Love's Exchange

Richard Le Gallienne, Simple Poetry

Too Late

Richard Le Gallienne, Simple Poetry

English

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Young Love

Young love, all rainbows in the lane,
    Brushed by the honeysuckle vines,
Scattered the wild rose in a dream:
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Ah, redder lips than any rose!
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A fairy creature made of dew
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Haunted as marble in the moon,
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Youth and Age

Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying,
Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee -
Both were mine! Life went a-maying
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When I was young? - Ah, woeful When!
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This breathing house not built with hands,
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Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like;
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To Isabel

A Beautiful Little Girl.

Fair as some sea-child, in her coral bower,
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Young Love I - "Surely at last, O Lady, the sweet moon"

N.B. - This sequence of poems has appeared in former editions under the title of 'Love Platonic.'


I

1
Surely at last, O Lady, the sweet moon
That bringeth in the happy singing weather
Groweth to pearly queendom, and full soon
Shall Love and Song go hand in hand together;
For all the pain that all too long hath waited
In deep dumb darkness shall have speech at last,
And the bright babe Death gave the Love he mated
Shall leap to light and kiss the weeping past.

For all the silver morning is a-glimmer
With gleaming spears of great Apollo's host,
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Robert Louis Stevenson - An Elegy

High on his Patmos of the Southern Seas
Our northern dreamer sleeps,
Strange stars above him, and above his grave
Strange leaves and wings their tropic splendours wave,
While, far beneath, mile after shimmering mile,
The great Pacific, with its faery deeps,
Smiles all day long its silken secret smile.

Son of a race nomadic, finding still
Its home in regions furthest from its home,
Ranging untired the borders of the world,
And resting but to roam;
Loved of his land, and making all his boast
The birthright of the blood from which he came,
Heir to those lights that guard the Scottish coast,
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In Autumn

The leaves are many under my feet,
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The low winds moan for dead sweet years;
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I know the leaves that die to-night
    Once budded to the sky,
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O leaves, so quietly ending now,
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