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The Lover Pleads With His Friend For Old Friends
Though you are in your shining days,Voices among the crowdAnd new friends busy with your praise,Be not unkind or proud,But think about old friends the most:Time's bitter flood will rise,Your beauty perish and be lostFor all eyes but these eyes.
William Butler Yeats
To A Proud Beauty - A Valentine
Though I have loved you well, I ween,And you, too, fancied me,Your heart hath too divided beenA constant heart to be.And like the gay and youthful knight,Who loved and rode away,Your fleeting fancy takes a flightWith every fleeting day.So let it be as you propose,Tho hard the struggle be;Tis fitter far, that goodness knows!Since we cannot agree.Lets quarrel once for all, my sweet,Forget the past, and thenIll kiss each pretty girl I meet,While youll flirt with the men.
Adam Lindsay Gordon
On Some Rose Leaves Brought From The Vale Of Cashmere.
Faded and pale their beauty, vanished their early bloom,Their folded leaves emit alone a sweet though faint perfume,But, oh! than brightest bud or flower to me are they more dear,They come from that rose-haunted land, the bright Vale of Cashmere.Cashmere! a spell is in that name! what dreams its sound awakesOf roses sweet as Eden's flowers, of minarets and lakes,Of scenes as vaguely, strangely bright as those of fairy land,Springing to life and loveliness 'neath some enchanter's wand!Cashmere! poetic in its name, its clear and brilliant skiesThat seem to clothe earth, flower and wave in their own lovely dyes;Poetic in its legend lore, and spell more dear than all,Enshrined in poet's inmost heart, the home of "Nourmahal."*Yes, there oft fell her fairy...
Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
Five Kisses
I - THE MOTHER'S KISSLove breathed a secret to her listening heart, And said "Be silent." Though she guarded it,And dwelt as one within a world apart, Yet sun and star seemed by that secret lit.And where she passed, each whispering wind ablow, And every little blossom in the sod,Called joyously to her, "We know, we know, For are we not the intimates of God?"Life grew so radiant, and so opulent, That when her fragile body and her brainBy mortal throes of agony were rent, She felt a curious rapture in her pain.Then, after anguish, came the supreme bliss -They brought the little baby, for her kiss!II - THE BETROTHALThere was a little pause between the dances; Without, somewhere, a tinkling fountain p...
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Illusion
What is the love of shadowy lipsThat know not what they seek or press,From whom the lure for ever slipsAnd fails their phantom tenderness?The mystery and light of eyesThat near to mine grow dim and cold;They move afar in ancient skiesMid flame and mystic darkness rolled.O, beauty, as thy heart o'erflowsIn tender yielding unto me,A vast desire awakes and growsUnto forgetfulness of thee.
George William Russell
True Pleasures.
Lord, my soul with pleasure springs,When Jesus name I hear;And when God the Spirit bringsThe word of promise near:Beauties too, in holiness,Still delighted I perceive;Nor have words that can expressThe joys thy precepts give.Clothed in sanctity and grace,How sweet it is to seeThose who love thee as they pass,Or when they wait on thee:Pleasant too, to sit and tellWhat we owe to love divine;Till our bosoms grateful swell,And eyes begin to shine.Those the comforts I possess,Which God shall still increase,All his ways are pleasantness,[1]And all his paths are peace.Nothing Jesus did or spoke,Henceforth let me ever slight;For I love his easy yoke,[2]And find his...
William Cowper
The Farewell.
LET mine eye the farewell say,That my lips can utter ne'er;Fain I'd be a man to-day,Yet 'tis hard, oh, hard to bear!Mournful in an hour like thisIs love's sweetest pledge, I ween;Cold upon thy mouth the kiss,Faint thy fingers' pressure e'en.Oh what rapture to my heartUsed each stolen kiss to bring!As the violets joy impart,Gather'd in the early spring.Now no garlands I entwine,Now no roses pluck. for thee,Though 'tis springtime, Fanny mine,Dreary autumn 'tis to me![Probably addressed to his mistress Frederica.]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Parting Soul And Her Guardian Angel.
(Written during sickness).Soul - Oh! say must I leave this world of light With its sparkling streams and sunshine bright, Its budding flowers, its glorious sky? Vain 'tis to ask me - I cannot die!Angel - But, sister, list! in the realms above, That happy home of eternal love, Are flowers more fair, and skies more clear Than those thou dost cling to so fondly here.Soul - Ah! yes, but to reach that home of light I must pass through the fearful vale of night; And my soul with alarm doth shuddering cry - O angel, I tell thee, I dare not die!Angel - Ah! mortal beloved, in that path untried Will I be, as ever, still at thy side, T...
To .......
When I loved you, I can't but allow I had many an exquisite minute;But the scorn that I feel for you now Hath even more luxury in it.Thus, whether we're on or we're off, Some witchery seems to await you;To love you was pleasant enough, And, oh! 'tis delicious hate you!
Thomas Moore
The Lyre Of Anacreon
The minstrel of the classic layOf love and wine who singsStill found the fingers run astrayThat touched the rebel strings.Of Cadmus he would fain have sung,Of Atreus and his line;But all the jocund echoes rungWith songs of love and wine.Ah, brothers! I would fain have caughtSome fresher fancy's gleam;My truant accents find, unsought,The old familiar theme.Love, Love! but not the sportive childWith shaft and twanging bow,Whose random arrows drove us wildSome threescore years ago;Not Eros, with his joyous laugh,The urchin blind and bare,But Love, with spectacles and staff,And scanty, silvered hair.Our heads with frosted locks are white,Our roofs are thatched with snow,But red, in c...
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Verse by Taj Mahomed
When first I loved, I gave my very soulUtterly unreserved to Love's control,But Love deceived me, wrenched my youth awayAnd made the gold of life for ever grey.Long I lived lonely, yet I tried in vainWith any other Joy to stifle pain;There is no other joy, I learned to know,And so returned to Love, as long ago.Yet I, this little while ere I go hence,Love very lightly now, in self-defence.
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
Love's Baptism.
I'm ceded, I've stopped being theirs;The name they dropped upon my faceWith water, in the country church,Is finished using now,And they can put it with my dolls,My childhood, and the string of spoolsI've finished threading too.Baptized before without the choice,But this time consciously, of graceUnto supremest name,Called to my full, the crescent dropped,Existence's whole arc filled upWith one small diadem.My second rank, too small the first,Crowned, crowing on my father's breast,A half unconscious queen;But this time, adequate, erect,With will to choose or to reject.And I choose -- just a throne.
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Two In The Campagna
II wonder do you feel to-dayAs I have felt since, hand in hand,We sat down on the grass, to strayIn spirit better through the land,This morn of Rome and May?IIFor me, I touched a thought, I know,Has tantalized me many times,(Like turns of thread the spiders throwMocking across our path) for rhymesTo catch at and let go.IIIHelp me to hold it! First it leftThe yellowing fennel, run to seedThere, branching from the brickworks cleft,Some old tombs ruin: yonder weedTook up the floating weft,IVWhere one small orange cup amassedFive beetles, blind and green they gropeAmong the honey-meal: and last,Everywhere on the grassy slopeI traced it. Hold it fast!VThe champaign with ...
Robert Browning
Madonna Mia
A lily-girl, not made for this world's pain,With brown, soft hair close braided by her ears,And longing eyes half veiled by slumberous tearsLike bluest water seen through mists of rain:Pale cheeks whereon no love hath left its stain,Red underlip drawn in for fear of love,And white throat, whiter than the silvered dove,Through whose wan marble creeps one purple vein.Yet, though my lips shall praise her without cease,Even to kiss her feet I am not bold,Being o'ershadowed by the wings of awe,Like Dante, when he stood with BeatriceBeneath the flaming Lion's breast, and sawThe seventh Crystal, and the Stair of Gold.
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
Harry The First.
In his arm-chair, warmly cushioned,In the quiet earned by labor,Life's reposeful Indian summer,Grandpa sits; and lets the paperLie upon his knee unheeded.Shine his cheeks like winter apples,Gleams his smile like autumn sunshine,As he looks on little Harry,First-born of the house of Graham,Bravely cutting teeth in silence,Cutting teeth with looks heroic.Some deep thought seems moving Grandpa,Ponders he awhile in silence,Then he turns, and says to Grandma,"Nancy, do you think that everThere was such a child before?"Grandma, with prim precisionThe seam-stitch impaleth deftlyOn her sharp and glittering needle,Then she turns and answers calmly,With a deep assurance - "NeverWas there such a child before!"
Marietta Holley
The Gardens Of Adonis
Belovèd, I would tell a ghostly thingThat hides beneath the simple name of Spring;Wild beyond hope the news - the dead return,The shapes that slept, their breath a frozen mist,Ascend from out sarcophagus and urn,Lips that were dust new redden to be kissed,Fires that were quenched re-burn.The gardens of Adonis bloom again,Proserpina may hold the lad no more,That in her arms the winter through hath lain;Up flings he from the hollow-sounding door,Where Love hath bruised her rosy breast in vain:Ah! through their tears - the happy April rain -They, like two stars aflame, together run,Then lift immortal faces in the sun.A faint far music steals from underground,And to the spirit's ear there comes the sound,The whisper vague, and rus...
Richard Le Gallienne
Devotion
The heart can think of no devotionGreater than being shore to the ocean,Holding the curve of one position,Counting an endless repetition.
Robert Lee Frost
Nearness
Thy hand my hand,Thine eyes my eyes,All of theeCaught and confused with me:My hand thy handMy eyes thine eyes,All of meSunken and discovered anew in thee....No: stillA foreign mind,A thoughtBy other yet uncaught;A secret willStrange as the wind:The heart of theeBewildering with strange fire the heart in me.Hand touches hand,Eye to eye beckons,But who shall guessAnother's loneliness?Though hand grasp handThough the eye quickens,Still lone as nightRemain thy spirit and mine, past touch and sight.
John Frederick Freeman