Leave me, O love! which reachest but to dust;
And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things:
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust;
Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.

Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might
To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be,
Which breaks the clouds, and opens forth the light
That doth both shine, and give us sight to see.

O take fast hold! let that light be thy guide,
In this small course which birth draws out to death,
And think how evil becometh him to slide,
Who seeketh heaven, and comes from heavenly breath.
Then farewell, world, thy uttermost I see,
Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me.

SPLENDIDIS LONGUM VALEDICO NUGIS

"'A little onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further on!'"
What trick of memory to 'my' voice hath brought
This mournful iteration? For though Time,
The Conqueror, crowns the Conquered, on this brow
Planting his favourite silver diadem,
Nor he, nor minister of his intent
To run before him hath enrolled me yet,
Though not unmenaced, among those who lean
Upon a living staff, with borrowed sight.
O my own Dora, my beloved child!
Should that day come but hark! the birds salute
The cheerful dawn, brightening for me the east;
For me, thy natural leader, once again
Impatient to conduct thee, not as erst
A tottering infant, with compliant stoop
From flower to flower supported; but to curb
Thy nymph-like step swift-bounding o'er the lawn,<...

You call it, "Love lies bleeding," so you may,
Though the red Flower, not prostrate, only droops,
As we have seen it here from day to day,
From month to month, life passing not away:
A flower how rich in sadness! Even thus stoops,
(Sentient by Grecian sculpture's marvelous power)
Thus leans, with hanging brow and body bent
Earthward in uncomplaining languishment
The dying Gladiator. So, sad Flower!
('Tis Fancy guides me willing to be led,
Though by a slender thread,)
So drooped Adonis bathed in sanguine dew
Of his death-wound, when he from innocent air
The gentlest breath of resignation drew;
While Venus in a passion of despair
Rent, weeping over him, her golden hair
Spangled with drops of that celestial shower.
She suffered, as Immortals sometimes do;

"Under the flag
Of each his faction, they to battle bring
Their embryo atoms."
- Milton.


Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow,
Lethe's weed and Hermes' feather;
Come to-day, and come to-morrow,
I do love you both together!
I love to mark sad faces in fair weather;
And hear a merry laugh amid the thunder;
Fair and foul I love together.
Meadows sweet where flames are under,
And a giggle at a wonder;
Visage sage at pantomine;
Funeral, and steeple-chime;
Infant playing with a skull;
Morning fair, and shipwreck'd hull;
Nightshade with the woodbine kissing;
Serpents in red roses hissing;
Cleopatra regal-dress'd
With the aspic at her breast;
Dancing music, music sad,
Both together, sane and mad;
Muses bright and muses ...

To Alice and Hypatia Bradlaugh

Who was Lilah? I am sure
She was young and sweet and pure;
With the forehead wise men love,
Here a lucid dawn above
Broad curved brows, and twilight there,
Under the deep dusk of hair.

And her eyes? I cannot say
Whether brown, or blue, or grey:
I have seen them brown, and blue,
And a soft green grey, the hue
Shakespeare loved (and he was wise);
'Grey as glass' were Silvia's eyes.

So to Lilah's name above
I will add two names I love,
Linking with the bracket curls
Three sweet names of three sweet girls:-
Sunday of Saint Valentine,
Eighteen hundred sixty-nine.

Lines addressed to the daughter of Richard Dalton Williams.



Child of the heart of a child of sweetest song!
The poet's blood flows through thy fresh pure veins;
Dost ever hear faint echoes float along
Thy days and dreams of thy dead father's strains?
        Dost ever hear,
    In mournful times,
        With inner ear,
The strange sweet cadences of thy father's rhymes?

Child of a child of art, which Heaven doth give
To few, to very few as unto him!
His songs are wandering o'er the world, but live
In his child's heart, in some place lone and dim;
    And nights and days
        With vestal's eyes
        And soundless sighs
Thou keepest watch above thy father's lays.

Child of a dreamer of dreams all unfulfilled --
(And t...

Oh, call it by some better name,
    For Friendship sounds too cold,
While Love is now a worldly flame,
    Whose shrine must be of gold:
And Passion, like the sun at noon,
    That burns o'er all he sees,
Awhile as warm will set as soon--
    Then call it none of these.

Imagine something purer far,
    More free from stain of clay
Than Friendship, Love, or Passion are,
    Yet human, still as they:
And if thy lip, for love like this,
    No mortal word can frame,
Go, ask of angels what it is,
    And call it by that name!

Since now the hour is come at last,
When you must quit your anxious lover,
Since now, our dream of bliss is past,
One pang, my girl, and all is over.

Alas! that pang will be severe,
Which bids us part, to meet no more;
Which tears me far from one so dear,
Departing for a distant shore.

Well! we have pass'd some happy hours,
And joy will mingle with our tears;
When thinking on these ancient towers,
The shelter of our infant years.

Where from this gothic casement's height,
We view'd the lake, the park, the dell,
And still though tears obstruct our sight,
We lingering look a last farewell. -

O'er fields, through which we us'd to run,
And spend the hours in childish play,
O'er shades where, when our race was done,
Reposing on...

Tune - "*On a bank of flowers.*"

I.

    On a bank of flowers, in a summer day,
        For summer lightly drest,
    The youthful blooming Nelly lay,
        With love and sleep opprest;
    When Willie wand'ring thro' the wood,
        Who for her favour oft had sued,
    He gaz'd, he wish'd, he fear'd, he blush'd,
        And trembled where he stood.

II.

    Her closed eyes like weapons sheath'd,
        Were seal'd in soft repose;
    Her lips still as she fragrant breath'd,
        It richer dy'd the rose.
    The springing lilies sweetly prest,
        Wild. wanton, kiss'd her rival breast;
    He gaz'd, he wish'd, he fear'd, he blush'd,
        His bosom ill at rest.

III.

    Her robes light waving in the breeze
        Her tender limbs embrace;
    Her lovely form, her native ease,
        All harmony and grace:
    Tumultuou...

The God of Love and I in wonder stared,
(Ne'er having gazed on miracles ere now,)
Upon my lady's smiling lips and brow,
Who only with herself may be compared.
Neath the calm beauty of her forehead bared,
Those twin stars of my love did burn and flow,
No lesser lamps again the path might show
To the proud lover who by these had fared.
Oh miracle, when on the grass at rest,
Herself a flower, she would clasp and hold
A leafy branch against her snow-white breast.
What joy to see her, in the autumn cold,
Wander alone, with maiden thoughts possess'd,
Weaving a garland of dry, crispy gold!

Oh, lovely Mary Donnelly, my joy, my only best
If fifty girls were round you, I’d hardly see the rest;
Be what it may the time o’ day, the place be where it will
Sweet looks o’ Mary Donnelly, they bloom before me still.

Her eyes like mountain water that’s flowing on a rock,
How clear they are, how dark they are! they give me many a shock.
Red rowans warm in sunshine and wetted with a shower,
Could ne’er express the charming lip that has me in its power.

Her nose is straight and handsome, her eyebrows lifted up,
Her chin is very neat and pert, and smooth like a china cup,
Her hair’s the brag of Ireland, so weighty and so fine;
It’s rolling down upon her neck, and gathered in a twine.

The dance o’ last Whit-Monday night exceeded all before,
No pretty girl fro...

    "As friend," she said, "I will be kind,
    My sympathy will rarely fail,
    My eyes to many faults be blind -
    As wife, I'll lecture, scold, and rail,

    "Be full of moods, a shrew one day,
    A thing of tenderness the next,
    Will kiss and wound - a woman's way
    That long the soul of man has vext.

    "You've been a true, unselfish man,
    Have thought upon my good alway,
    Been strong to shield, and wise to plan,
    But ah! there is a change to-day.

    "There's mastery in your 'Be my wife!'
    For self stands up and eagerly
    Claims all my love, and all my life,
    The body and the soul of me.

    "Come, call me friend, and own me such,
    Nor count it such a wondrous thing
    To hold me close, thr...

i.

It seems a year, and more, since last we met,
    Since roseate spring repaid, in part, its debt
To thy bright eyes, and o'er the lowlands fair
Made daffodils so like thy golden hair
That I, poor wretch, have kiss'd them on my knees!
Forget-Me-Nots peep out beneath the trees
    So like thine eyes that I have question'd them,
And thought thee near, though viewless on the breeze.


ii.

It seems a year; and yet, when all is told,
    'Tis but a week since I was re-enroll'd
Among thy friends. How fairy-like the scene!
How gay with lamps! How fraught with tender sheen
Of life and languor! I was thine alone:--
Alert for thee,--intent to catch the tone
    Of thy sweet voice,--and proud to be alive
To call to heart a peace for ever flow...

The pines were dark on Ramoth hill,
Their song was soft and low;
The blossoms in the sweet May wind
Were falling like the snow.

The blossoms drifted at our feet,
The orchard birds sang clear;
The sweetest and the saddest day
It seemed of all the year.

For, more to me than birds or flowers,
My playmate left her home,
And took with her the laughing spring,
The music and the bloom.

She kissed the lips of kith and kin,
She laid her hand in mine
What more could ask the bashful boy
Who fed her father’s kine?

She left us in the bloom of May
The constant years told o’er
Their seasons with as sweet May morns,
But she came back no more.

I walk, with noiseless feet, the round
Of uneventful years;
Still o’er and ...

Quel vago impallidir che 'l dolce riso.

LEAVE-TAKING.


    That witching paleness, which with cloud of love
Veil'd her sweet smile, majestically bright,
So thrill'd my heart, that from the bosom's night
Midway to meet it on her face it strove.
Then learnt I how, 'mid realms of joy above,
The blest behold the blest: in such pure light
I scann'd her tender thought, to others' sight
Viewless!--but my fond glances would not rove.
Each angel grace, each lowly courtesy,
E'er traced in dame by Love's soft power inspired,
Would seem but foils to those which prompt my lay:
Upon the ground was cast her gentle eye,
And still methought, though silent, she inquired,
"What bears my faithful friend so soon, so far away?"

WRANGHAM.

    [Greek: NEA turannei]
        EURPID. "Medea," v. 967.


Nay, tempt me not to love again,
    There was a time when love was sweet;
Dear Nea! had I known thee then,
    Our souls had not been slow to meet.
But, oh, this weary heart hath run,
    So many a time, the rounds of pain,
Not even for thee, thou lovely one,
    Would I endure such pangs again.

    If there be climes, where never yet
The print of beauty's foot was set,
Where man may pass his loveless nights,
Unfevered by her false delights,
Thither my wounded soul would fly,
Where rosy cheek or radiant eye
Should bring no more their bliss, or pain,
Nor fetter me to earth again.
Dear absent girl! whose eyes of light,
    Though little prized when all ...

Fade off the ridges, rosy light,
Fade slowly from the last gray height,
And leave no gloomy cloud to grieve
The heart of this enchanted eve!

All things beneath the still sky seem
Bound by the spell of a sweet dream;
In the dusk forest, dreamingly,
Droops slowly down each plumèd head;
The river flowing softly by
Dreams of the sea; the quiet sea
Dreams of the unseen stars; and I
Am dreaming of the dreamless dead.

The river has a silken sheen,
But red rays of the sunset stain
Its pictures, from the steep shore caught,
Till shades of rock, and fern, and tree
Glow like the figures on a pane
Of some old church by twilight seen,
Or like the rich devices wrought
In mediaeval tapestry.

All lonely in a drifting boat
Through shi...

ACT I.

Clara winds a skein, and sings with Brackenburg.

THE drum gives the signal!

Loud rings the shrill fife!
My love leads his troops on

Full arm'd for the strife,
While his hand grasps his lance
As they proudly advance.

My bosom pants wildly!
My blood hotly flows!
Oh had I a doublet,
A helmet, and hose!

Through the gate with bold footstep

I after him hied,
Each province, each country

Explored by his side.
The coward foe trembled
Then rattled our shot:
What bliss e'er resembled

A soldier's glad lot!

ACT III.

CLARA sings.


Gladness

And sadness
And pensiveness blending

Yearning

And burning
In torment ne'er ending...