Jenifer's Love

Small is my secret--let it pass--
    Small in your life the share I had,
Who sat beside you in the class,
    Awed by the bright superior lad:
        Whom yet with hot and eager face
        I prompted when he missed his place.

For you the call came swift and soon:
    But sometimes in your holidays
You meet me trudging home at noon
    To dinner through the dusty ways,
        And recognized, and with a nod
        Passed on, but never guessed--thank God!

Truly our ways were separate.
    I bent myself to hoe and drill,

Yea, with an honest man to mate,
    Fulfilling God Almighty's will;
        And bore him children. But my prayers
        Were yours--and, only after, theirs.

While you--still loftier, more remote,
    You sprang from stair to stair of fame,
And you've a riband on your coat,
    And you've a title to your name;
        But have you yet a star to shine
        Above your bed, as I o'er mine?

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, born on November 21, 1863, and died on May 12, 1944, was a Cornish writer, who published under the pen name Q. His legacy includes a vast body of critical and anthological work, most notably 'The Oxford Book of English Verse 1250–1900'. Quiller-Couch was knighted in 1910 and also served as a professor of English at the University of Cambridge. His works have influenced many, including writers like Virginia Woolf.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Titania.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Simple Poetry

Epilogue To A Mother, On Seeing Her Smile Repeated In Her Daughter's Eyes

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Simple Poetry

Measure For Measure.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Simple Poetry

The Sair Stroke.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Alma Mater

    Know you her secret none can utter?
        Hers of the Book, the tripled Crown?
    Still on the spire the pigeons flutter,
        Still by the gateway flits the gown;
    Still on the street, from corbel and gutter,
        Faces of stone look down.

    Faces of stone, and stonier faces--
        Some from library windows wan
    Forth on her gardens, her green spaces,
        Peer and turn to their books anon.
    Hence, my Muse, from the green oases
        Gather the tent, begone!

Nay, should she by the pavement linger
        Under the rooms where once she played,
    Who from the feast would rise to fling her
        One poor sou for her serenade?
    One short laugh for the antic finger
        Thrumming a lute-strin...

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Young Love

I

I cannot heed the words they say,
The lights grow far away and dim,
Amid the laughing men and maids
My eyes unbidden seek for him.

I hope that when he smiles at me
He does not guess my joy and pain,
For if he did, he is too kind
To ever look my way again.

II

I have a secret in my heart
No ears have ever heard,
And still it sings there day by day
Most like a caged bird.

And when it beats against the bars,
I do not set it free,
For I am happier to know
It only sings for me.

III

I wrote his name along the beach,
I love the letters so.
Far up it seemed and out of reach,
For still the tide was low.

But oh, the sea came creeping up,
And washed the name away,
And on the san...

Sara Teasdale

Parables

I

Dear Love, you ask if I be true,
If other women move
The heart that only beats for you
With pulses all of love.

Out in the chilly dew one morn
I plucked a wild sweet rose,
A little silver bud new-born
And longing to unclose.

I took it, loving new-born things,
I knew my heart was warm,
'O little silver rose, come in
And shelter from the storm.'

And soon, against my body pressed,
I felt its petals part,
And, looking down within my breast
I saw its golden heart.

O such a golden heart it has,
Your eyes may never see,
To others it is always shut,
It opens but for me.

But that is why you see me pass
The honeysuckle there,
And leave the lilies in the grass,
Although they be so fair;

Richard Le Gallienne

Love.

Love - love - love - love, -
A tiny hand in a tiny glove;
A witching smile that means, - well, - well,
Whether little or much its hard to tell.
A tiny foot and a springy tread,
Short curls running riot all over her head;
A waist that invites a fond embrace,
Yet by modesty girt seems a holy place;
Not a place where an arm should be idly thrown,
But should gently rest, as would rest my own.
An angel whose wings are but hid from view,
Whose charms are many and faults so few,
As near perfection as mortal can be,
Is the one that I love and that loves but me.
They tell me that love is blind, - .oh, no!
They can never convince a lover so;
Love cannot be blind for it sees much more,
Then others have ever discovered before.
Oh, the restless night with its ple...

John Hartley

An Old Sweetheart Of Mine

As one who cons at evening o'er an album all alone,
And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known,
So I turn the leaves of fancy till, in shadowy design,
I find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine.

The lamplight seems to glimmer with a flicker of surprise,
As I turn it low to rest me of the dazzle in my eyes,
And light my pipe in silence, save a sigh that seems to yoke
Its fate with my tobacco and to vanish with the smoke.

'Tis a fragrant retrospection - for the loving thoughts that start
Into being are like perfume from the blossom of the heart;
And to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine -
When my truant fancy wanders with that old sweetheart of mine.

Though I hear, beneath my study, like a fluttering of wings,
The voices o...

James Whitcomb Riley

An Old Sweetheart Of Mine

An old sweetheart of mine! - Is this her presence here with me,
Or but a vain creation of a lover's memory?
A fair, illusive vision that would vanish into air
Dared I even touch the silence with the whisper of a prayer?

Nay, let me then believe in all the blended false and true -
The semblance of the OLD love and the substance of the NEW, -
The THEN of changeless sunny days - the NOW of shower and shine -
But Love forever smiling - as that old sweetheart of mine.

This ever-restful sense of HOME, though shouts ring in the hall. -
The easy chair - the old book-shelves and prints along the wall;
The rare HABANAS in their box, or gaunt church-warden-stem
That often wags, above the jar, derisively at them.

As one who cons at evening o'er an album, all alone,
And...

James Whitcomb Riley