Written Upon Love's Frontier-Post. (From 'Troy Town'.)

Toiling love, loose your pack,
    All your sighs and tears unbind:
Care's a ware will break a back,
    Will not bend a maiden's mind.

In this State a man shall need
    Neither priest nor law giver:
Those same lips that are his creed
    Shall confess their worshipper.

All the laws he must obey,
    Now in force and now repeal'd,
Shift in eyes that shift as they,
    Till alike with kisses seal'd.

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

Christmas Eve

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Simple Poetry

Exmoor Verses III. Dereliction

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Simple Poetry

A Triolet.

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.

Love, Not Duty

Thought may well be ever ranging,
And opinion ever changing,
Task-work be, though ill begun,
Dealt with by experience better;
By the law and by the letter
Duty done is duty done
Do it, Time is on the wing!

Hearts, tis quite another thing,
Must or once for all be given,
Or must not at all be given;
Hearts, tis quite another thing!

To bestow the soul away
Is an idle duty-play!
Why, to trust a life-long bliss
To caprices of a day,
Scarce were more depraved than this!

Men and maidens, see you mind it;
Show of love, whereer you find it,
Look if duty lurk behind it!
Duty-fancies, urging on
Whither love had never gone!

Loving if the answering breast
Seem not to be thus possessed,
Still in hoping have a car...

Arthur Hugh Clough

Rhymes On The Road. Extract XI. Florence.

No--'tis not the region where Love's to be found--
    They have bosoms that sigh, they have glances that rove,
They have language a Sappho's own lip might resound,
    When she warbled her best--but they've nothing like Love.

Nor is't that pure sentiment only they want,
    Which Heaven for the mild and the tranquil hath made--
Calm, wedded affection, that home-rooted plant
    Which sweetens seclusion and smiles in the shade;

That feeling which, after long years have gone by,
    Remains like a portrait we've sat for in youth,
Where, even tho' the flush of the colors may fly,
    The features still live in their first smiling truth;

That union where all that in Woman is kind,
    With all that in Man most ennoblingly towers,
Grow wreathed into...

Thomas Moore

The Face At The Casement

    If ever joy leave
An abiding sting of sorrow,
So befell it on the morrow
    Of that May eve . . .

    The travelled sun dropped
To the north-west, low and lower,
The pony's trot grew slower,
    And then we stopped.

    "This cosy house just by
I must call at for a minute,
A sick man lies within it
    Who soon will die.

    "He wished to marry me,
So I am bound, when I drive near him,
To inquire, if but to cheer him,
    How he may be."

    A message was sent in,
And wordlessly we waited,
Till some one came and stated
    The bulletin.

    And that the sufferer said,
For her call no words could thank her;
As his angel he must rank her
    Till life's spark fled.

    Slowly we dro...

Thomas Hardy

Unity Put Quarterly[1].

By A. C. S.


The Centuries kiss and commingle,
Cling, clasp, and are knit in a chain;
No cycle but scorns to be single,
No two but demur to be twain,
'Till the land of the lute and the love-tale
Be bride of the boreal breast,
And the dawn with the darkness shall dovetail,
    The East with the West.

The desire of the grey for the dun nights
Is that of the dun for the grey;
The tales of the Thousand and One Nights
Touch lips with 'The Times' of to-day.--
Come, chasten the cheap with the classic;
Choose, Churton, thy chair and thy class,
Mix, melt in the must that is Massic
    The beer that is Bass!

Omnipotent age of the Aorist!
Infinitely freely exact!--
As the fragrance of fiction is fairest
If frayed in the furnace ...

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

To A Friend Who Sent Me A Box Of Violets

Nay, more than violets
These thoughts of thine, friend!
Rather thy reedy brook--
Taw's tributary--
At midnight murmuring,
Descried them, the delicate
Dark-eyed goddesses,
There by his cressy bed
Dissolved and dreaming
Dreams that distilled into dew
All the purple of night,
All the shine of a planet.

Whereat he whispered;
And they arising--

Of day's forget-me-nots
The duskier sisters--
Descended, relinquished
The orchard, the trout-pool,
Torridge and Tamar,
The Druid circles,
Sheepfolds of Dartmoor,
Granite and sandstone;
By Roughtor, Dozmare,
Down the vale of the Fowey
Moving in silence,
Brushing the nightshade
By bridges cyclopean,
By Trevenna, Treverbyn,
Lawharne and Largin,
By Glyn...

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

An Oath. (From 'Troy Town'.)

A month ago Lysander pray'd
    To Jove, to Cupid, and to Venus,
That he might die if he betray'd
    A single vow that pass'd between us.

Ah, careless gods, to hear so ill
    And cheat a maid on you relying!
For false Lysander's thriving still,
    And 'tis Corinna lies a-dying.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch