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She, To Him IV
This love puts all humanity from me;I can but maledict her, pray her dead,For giving love and getting love of thee -Feeding a heart that else mine own had fed!How much I love I know not, life not known,Save as some unit I would add love by;But this I know, my being is but thine ownFused from its separateness by ecstasy.And thus I grasp thy amplitudes, of herUngrasped, though helped by nigh-regarding eyes;Canst thou then hate me as an envierWho see unrecked what I so dearly prize?Believe me, Lost One, Love is lovelierThe more it shapes its moan in selfish-wise.1866.
Thomas Hardy
In A Year
I.Never any more,While I live,Need I hope to see his faceAs before.Once his love grown chill,Mine may striveBitterly we re-embrace,Single still.II.Was it something said,Something done,Vexed him? was it touch of hand,Turn of head?Strange! that very wayLove begun:I as little understandLoves decay.III.When I sewed or drew,I recallHow he looked as if I sung,Sweetly too.If I spoke a word,First of allUp his cheek the colour sprang,Then he heard.IV.Sitting by my side,At my feet,So he breathed but air I breathed,Satisfied!I, too, at loves brimTouched the sweet:I would die if death bequeathedSweet to him.V.
Robert Browning
Fragoletta
O love! what shall be said of thee?The son of grief begot by joy?Being sightless, wilt thou see?Being sexless, wilt thou beMaiden or boy?I dreamed of strange lips yesterdayAnd cheeks wherein the ambiguous bloodWas like a roses, yea,A roses when it layWithin the bud.What fields have bred thee, or what grovesConcealed thee, O mysterious flower,O double rose of Loves,With leaves that lure the dovesFrom bud to bower?I dare not kiss it, lest my lipPress harder than an indrawn breath,And all the sweet life slipForth, and the sweet leaves drip,Bloodlike, in death.O sole desire of my delight!O sole delight of my desire!Mine eyelids and eyesightFeed on thee day and nightLike lips...
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Excuse
I too have sufferd: yet I knowShe is not cold, though she seems so:She is not cold, she is not light;But our ignoble souls lack might.She smiles and smiles, and will not sigh,While we for hopeless passion die;Yet she could love, those eyes declare,Were but men nobler than they are.Eagerly once her gracious kenWas turnd upon the sons of men.But light the serious visage grew,She lookd, and smiled, and saw them through.Our petty souls, our strutting wits,Our labourd puny passion-fits,Ah, may she scorn them still, till weScorn them as bitterly as she!Yet oh, that Fate would let her seeOne of some worthier race than we;One for whose sake she once might proveHow deeply she who scorns can love....
Matthew Arnold
Verses Selected From An Occasional Poem Entitled Valediction.
O Friendship! cordial of the human breast!So little felt, so fervently professd!Thy blossoms deck our unsuspecting years;The promise of delicious fruit appears:We hug the hopes of constancy and truth,Such is the folly of our dreaming youth;But soon, alas! detect the rash mistakeThat sanguine inexperience loves to make;And view with tears the expected harvest lost,Decayd by time, or witherd by a frost.Whoever undertakes a friends great partShould be renewd in nature, pure in heart,Prepared for martyrdom, and strong to proveA thousand ways the force of genuine love.He may be calld to give up health and gain,To exchange content for trouble, ease for pain,To echo sigh for sigh, and groan for groan,And wet his cheeks with sorrows not his...
William Cowper
Two.
With her soft face half turned to me,Like an arrested moonbeam, sheStood in the cirque of that deep tree.I took her by the hands; she raisedHer face to mine; and, half amazed,Remembered; and we stood and gazed.How good to kiss her throat and hair,And say no word! - Her throat was bare;As some moon-fungus white and fair.Had God not giv'n us life for this?The world-old, amorous happinessOf arms that clasp, and lips that kiss!The eloquence of limbs and arms!The rhetoric of breasts, whose charmsSay to the sluggish blood what warms!Had God or Fiend assigned this hourThat bloomed, - where love had all of power, -The senses' aphrodisiac flower?The dawn was far away. Nude nightHung savage stars of s...
Madison Julius Cawein
May Song.
How fair doth NatureAppear again!How bright the sunbeams!How smiles the plain!The flow'rs are burstingFrom ev'ry bough,And thousand voicesEach bush yields now.And joy and gladnessFill ev'ry breast!Oh earth! oh sunlight!Oh rapture blest!Oh love! oh loved one!As golden bright,As clouds of morningOn yonder height!Thou blessest gladlyThe smiling field,The world in fragrantVapour conceal'd.Oh maiden, maiden,How love I thee!Thine eye, how gleams it!How lov'st thou me!The blithe lark lovethSweet song and air,The morning flow'retHeav'n's incense fair,As I no...
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Love and Grief.
One day, when Love and Summer both were young, Love in a garden found my lady weeping; Whereat, when he to kiss her would have sprung, I stayed his childish leaping. "Forbear," said I, "she is not thine to-day; Subdue thyself in silence to await her; If thou dare call her from Death's side away Thou art no Love, but traitor. Yet did he run, and she his kiss received, "She is twice mine," he cried, "since she is troubled; I knew but half, and now I see her grieved My part in her is doubled."
Henry John Newbolt
Love's Inspiration
Give me the chance, and I will makeThy thoughts of me, like worms this day,Take wings and change to butterfliesThat in the golden light shall play;Thy cold, clear heart, the quiet poolThat never heard Love's nightingale,Shall hear his music night and day,And in no seasons shall it fail.I'll make thy happy heart my port,Where all my thoughts are anchored fast;Thy meditations, full of praise,The flags of glory on each mast.I'll make my Soul thy shepherd soon,With all thy thoughts my grateful flock;And thou shalt say, each time I go,How long, my Love, ere thou'lt come back?
William Henry Davies
Benedicam Domino.
Thank God for life: life is not sweet always.Hands may he heavy-laden, hearts care full,Unwelcome nights follow unwelcome days,And dreams divine end in awakenings dull.Still it is life, anil life is cause for praise.This ache, this restlessness, this quickening sting,Prove me no torpid and inanimate thing,Prove me of Him who is of life the Spring.I am alive!--and that is beautiful.Thank God for Love: though Love may hurt and woundThough set with sharpest thorns its rose may be,Roses are not of winter, all attunedMust be the earth, full of soft stir, and freeAnd warm ere dawns the rose upon its tree.Fresh currents through my frozen pulses run;My heart has tasted summer, tasted sun,And I can thank Thee, Lord, although not oneOf all th...
Susan Coolidge
To A Child Embracing His Mother.
Love thy mother, little one!Kiss and clasp her neck again, -Hereafter she may have a sonWill kiss and clasp her neck in vain.Love thy mother, little one!Gaze upon her living eyes,And mirror back her love for thee, -Hereafter thou mayst shudder sighsTo meet them when they cannot see.Gaze upon her living eyes!Press her lips the while they glowWith love that they have often told, -Hereafter thou mayst press in woe,And kiss them till thine own are cold.Press her lips the while they glow!Oh, revere her raven hair!Although it be not silver-gray;Too early Death, led on by Care,May snatch save one dear lock away.Oh, revere her raven hair!Pray for her at eve and morn,That Heaven may long the stroke d...
Thomas Hood
The Birth Of Love
When Love was born of heavenly line,What dire intrigues disturbed Cythera's joy!Till Venus cried, "A mother's heart is mine;None but myself shall nurse my boy,"But, infant as he was, the childIn that divine embrace enchanted lay;And, by the beauty of the vase beguiled,Forgot the beverage--and pined away."And must my offspring languish in my sight?"(Alive to all a mother's pain,The Queen of Beauty thus her court addressed)"No: Let the most discreet of all my trainReceive him to her breast:Think all, he is the God of young delight."Then TENDERNESS with CANDOUR joined,And GAIETY the charming office sought;Nor even DELICACY stayed behind:But none of those fair Graces broughtWherewith to nurse the child--and still...
William Wordsworth
Song of Ramesram Temple Girl
Now is the season of my youth,Not thus shall I always be,Listen, dear Lord, thou too art young,Take thy pleasure with me.My hair is straight as the falling rain,And fine as morning mist,I am a rose awaiting theeThat none have touched or kissed.Do as thou wilt with mine and me, Beloved, I only pray,Follow the promptings of thy youth. Let there be no delay!A leaf that flutters upon the bough,A moment, and it is gone, -A bubble amid the fountain spray, -Ah, pause, and think thereon;For such is youth and its passing bloomThat wait for thee this hour,If aught in thy heart incline to meAh, stoop and pluck thy flower!Come, my Lord, to the temple shade, Where cooling fountains play,If aught...
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
Do You Remember Once . . .
IDo you remember once, in Paris of glad faces,The night we wandered off under the third moon's raysAnd, leaving far behind bright streets and busy places,Stood where the Seine flowed down between its quiet quais?The city's voice was hushed; the placid, lustrous watersMirrored the walls across where orange windows burned.Out of the starry south provoking rumors brought usFar promise of the spring already northward turned.And breast drew near to breast, and round its soft desireMy arm uncertain stole and clung there unrepelled.I thought that nevermore my heart would hover nigherTo the last flower of bliss that Nature's garden held.There, in your beauty's sweet abandonment to pleasure,The mute, half-open lips and tender, wondering ...
Alan Seeger
Lines Written In A Young Lady's Album
'Tis not in youth, when life is new, when but to live is sweet,When Pleasure strews her starlike flow'rs beneath our careless feet,When Hope, that has not been deferred, first waves its golden wings,And crowds the distant future with a thousand lovely things; -When if a transient grief o'ershades the spirit for a while,The momentary tear that falls is followed by a smile;Or if a pensive mood, at times, across the bosom steals,It scarcely sighs, so gentle is the pensiveness it feelsIt is not then the, restless soul will seek for one with whomTo share whatever lot it bears, its gladness or its gloom, -Some trusting, tried, and gentle heart, some true and faithful breast,Whereon its pinions it may fold, and claim a place of rest.But oh! when comes the i...
George W. Sands
Take Care Of Him.
"Thou whom I love, for whom I died,Lovest thou Me, My bride?" -Low on my knees I love Thee, Lord,Believed in and adored."That I love thee the proof is plain:How dost thou love again?" -In prayer, in toil, in earthly loss,In a long-carried cross."Yea, thou dost love: yet one adeptBrings more for Me to accept." -I mould my will to match with Thine,My wishes I resign."Thou givest much: then give the wholeFor solace of My soul." -More would I give, if I could get:But, Lord, what lack I yet?"In Me thou lovest Me: I callThee to love Me in all." -Brim full my heart, dear Lord, that soMy love may overflow."Love Me in sinners and in saints,In each who needs or faints." -Lord, I will love ...
Christina Georgina Rossetti
A "Thought-Flower"
Silently -- shadowly -- some lives go,And the sound of their voices is all unheard;Or, if heard at all, 'tis as faint as the flowOf beautiful waves which no storm hath stirred. Deep lives these As the pearl-strewn seas.Softly and noiselessly some feet treadLone ways on earth, without leaving a mark;They move 'mid the living, they pass to the dead,As still as the gleam of a star thro' the dark. Sweet lives those In their strange repose.Calmly and lowly some hearts beat,And none may know that they beat at all;They muffle their music whenever they meetA few in a hut or a crowd in a hall. Great hearts those -- God only knows!Soundlessly -- shadowly -- such move on,Dim as the dream of a child asl...
Abram Joseph Ryan
Genieve To Her Lover.
I turn the key in this idle hourOf an ivory box, and looking, lo -See only dust - the dust of a flower;The waters will ebb, the waters will flow,And dreams will come, and dreams will go, Forever.Oh, friend, if you and I should meetBeneath the boughs of the bending lime,Should you in the same low voice repeatThe tender words of the old love rhyme,It could not bring back the same old time, Never.When you laid this rose against my brow,I was quite unused to the ways of men,With my trusting heart; I am wiser now,So I smile, remembering my heart-throbs then,The dust of a rose cannot blossom again, Never.The brow that you praised has colder grown,And hearts will change, I suppose they must,A rose to ...
Marietta Holley