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The Lily Of The Valley
Sweetest of the flowers a-bloomingIn the fragrant vernal daysIs the Lily of the ValleyWith its soft, retiring ways.Well, you chose this humble blossomAs the nurse's emblem flower,Who grows more like her idealEvery day and every hour.Like the Lily of the ValleyIn her honesty and worth,Ah, she blooms in truth and virtueIn the quiet nooks of earth.Tho' she stands erect in honorWhen the heart of mankind bleeds,Still she hides her own deservingIn the beauty of her deeds.In the silence of the darknessWhere no eye may see and know,There her footsteps shod with mercy,And fleet kindness come and go.Not amid the sounds of plaudits,Nor before the garish day,Does she shed her soul's sweet pe...
Paul Laurence Dunbar
The Tom-toms
Dost thou hear the tom-toms throbbing,Like a lonely lover sobbingFor the beauty that is robbing him of all his life's delight?Plaintive sounds, restrained, enthralling,Seeking through the twilight fallingSomething lost beyond recalling, in the darkness of the night.Oh, my little, loved Firoza,Come and nestle to me closer,Where the golden-balled Mimosa makes a canopy above,For the day, so hot and burning,Dies away, and night, returning,Sets thy lover's spirit yearning for thy beauty and thy love.Soon will come the rosy warningOf the bright relentless morning,When, thy soft caresses scorning, I shall leave thee in the shade.All the day my work must chain me,And its weary bonds restrain me,For I may not re-attain thee till the li...
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
A Prayer Of Love.
A prayer of love, O Father! A fair and flowery way Life stretches out before these On this their marriage day. O pour Thy choicest blessing, Withhold no gift of Thine, Fill all their world with beauty And tenderness divine! A prayer of love, O Father! This holy love and pure, That thrills the soul to rapture, O may it e'er endure! The richest of earth's treasures, The gold without alloy, The flower of faith unfading, The full, the perfect joy! No mist of tears or doubting, But in their steadfast eyes The light divine, the light of love, The light of Paradise. A prayer of love, O Father! A prayer of love to Thee, God's best be th...
Jean Blewett
To A Rosebud In Humble Life
Sweet, uncultivated blossom, Reared in Spring's refreshing dews, Dear to every gazer's bosom, Fair to every eye that views;-- Opening bud, whose youth can charm us, Thine be many a happy hour: Spreading rose, whose beauties warm us-- Flourish long, my lovely flower. Though pride look disdainful on thee, Scorning scenes so mean as thine, Although fortune frown upon thee, Lovely blossom, ne'er repine: Health unbought is ever with thee, Which their wealth can never gain; Innocence doth garments give thee, Such as fashion apes in vain. When fit time and reason grant thee Leave to quit the parent tree, May some happy hand transplant thee To a station suiting t...
John Clare
Come
Come, when the pale moon like a petalFloats in the pearly dusk of spring,Come with arms outstretched to take me,Come with lips pursed up to cling.Come, for life is a frail moth flying,Caught in the web of the years that pass,And soon we two, so warm and eager,Will be as the gray stones in the grass.
Sara Teasdale
Restless Love.
Through rain, through snow,Through tempest go!'Mongst streaming caves,O'er misty waves,On, on! still on!Peace, rest have flown!Sooner through sadnessI'd wish to be slain,Than all the gladnessOf life to sustainAll the fond yearningThat heart feels for heart,Only seems burningTo make them both smart.How shall I fly?Forestwards hie?Vain were all strife!Bright crown of life.Turbulent bliss,Love, thou art this!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A Memory.
Amid my treasures once I found A simple faded flower;A flower with all its beauty fled, The darling of an hour.With bitterness I gazed awhile, Then flung it from my sight;For with it all came back to me the pain and heedless blight.But, moved with pity and regret I took it up again;For oh, so long and wearily In darkness it had lain.Ah, purple pansy, once I kissed Your dewy petals fair;For then, indeed, I had no thought Of earthly pain or care.Your faded petals now I touch With sacred love and awe;For never will my heart kneel down To earthly will or law.Your velvet beauty still is dear, Though faded now you seem;You drooped and died, yet still yo...
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
To The Same Flower (Daisy)
With little here to do or seeOf things that in the great world be,Daisy! again I talk to thee,For thou art worthy,Thou unassuming Common-placeOf Nature, with that homely face,And yet with something of a grace,Which Love makes for thee!Oft on the dappled turf at easeI sit, and play with similies,Loose types of things through all degrees,Thoughts of thy raising:And many a fond and idle nameI give to thee, for praise or blame,As is the humour of the game,While I am gazing.A nun demure of lowly port;Or sprightly maiden, of Love's court,In thy simplicity the sportOf all temptations;A queen in crown of rubies drest;A starveling in a scanty vest;Are all, as seems to suit thee best,Thy appellations....
William Wordsworth
The Nightingale Unheard
Yes, Nightingale, through all the summer-time We followed on, from moon to golden moon; From where Salerno day-dreams in the noon,And the far rose of Pæstum once did climb. All the white way beside the girdling blue,Through sun-shrill vines and campanile chime, We listened;--from the old year to the new. Brown bird, and where were you?You, that Ravello lured not, throned on high And filled with singing out of sun-burned throats! Nor yet Minore of the flame-sailed boats;Nor yet--of all bird-song should glorify-- Assisi, Little Portion of the blest,Assisi, in the bosom of the sky, Where God's own singer thatched his sunward nest; That little, heavenliest!And north and north, to where the hedge-row...
Josephine Preston Peabody
Epithalamium.
I."Whom God hath joined" - ah, this sententious phraseA meaning deeper than the sea conveys,And of a sweet and solemn service tellsWith the rich resonance of wedding-bells;It speaks of vows and obligations givenAs if amid the harmony of heaven,While seraph lips approving seem to say,"Love, honor, and obey."II.Is Hymen then ambassador divine,His mission, matrimonial and benign,The heart to counsel, ardor to incite,Convert the nun, rebuke the eremite?As if were this his mandate from the throne:"It is not good for them to be alone;Behold the land! its fruitage and its flowers,Not mine and thine, but ours."III.Did not great Paul aver, in lucid spell,That they of conjugal intent "do w...
Hattie Howard
Little Messages Of Joy And Hope
I.Take HeartTake heart again. Joy may be lost awhile.It is not always Spring.And even now from some far Summer IsleHither the birds may wing.II.TouchstonesHearts, that have cheered us ever, night and day,With words that helped us on the rugged way,The hard, long road of life to whom is dueMore than the heart can ever hope to payAre they not touchstones, soul-transmuting trueAll thoughts to gold, refining thus the clay?III.FortuneFortune may pass us by:Follow her flying feet.Love, all we ask, deny:Never admit defeat.Take heart again and try.Never say die.IVBe GladBe glad, just for to-day!O heart, be glad!Cast all your car...
Madison Julius Cawein
Motives.
IF to a girl who loves us trulyHer mother gives instruction dulyIn virtue, duty, and what not,And if she hearkens ne'er a jot,But with fresh-strengthen'd longing fliesTo meet our kiss that seems to burn,Caprice has just as much concernedAs love in her bold enterprise.But if her mother can succeedIn gaining for her maxims heed,And softening the girl's heart too,So that she coyly shuns our view,The heart of youth she knows but ill;For when a maiden is thus stern,Virtue in truth has less concernIn this, than an inconstant will.
An Old Saying
Many waters cannot quench love,Neither can the floods drown it.Who shall snare or slay the white doveFaith, whose very dreams crown it,Gird it round with grace and peace, deep,Warm, and pure, and soft as sweet sleep?Many waters cannot quench love,Neither can the floods drown it.Set me as a seal upon thine heart,As a seal upon thine arm.How should we behold the days departAnd the nights resign their charm?Love is as the soul: though hate and fearWaste and overthrow, they strike not here.Set me as a seal upon thine heart,As a seal upon thine arm.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Love's Language.
How does Love speak? In the faint flush upon the tell-tale cheek, And in the pallor that succeeds it; by The quivering lid of an averted eye - The smile that proves the patent to a sigh - Thus doth Love speak. How does Love speak? By the uneven heart-throbs, and the freak Of bounding pulses that stand still and ache, While new emotions, like strange barges, make Along vein-channels their disturbing course; Still as the dawn, and with the dawn's swift force - Thus doth Love speak. How does Love speak? In the avoidance of that which we seek - The sudden silence and reserve when near - The eye that glistens with an unshed tear - ...
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Love Abused.
What is there in the vale of lifeHalf so delightful as a wife,When friendship, love, and peace combineTo stamp the marriage-bond divine?The stream of pure and genuine loveDerives its current from above;And earth a second Eden shows,Whereer the healing water flows:But ah, if from the dykes and drainsOf sensual natures feverish veins,Lust, like a lawless headstrong flood,Impregnated with ooze and mud,Descending fast on every side,Once mingles with the sacred tide,Farewell the soul-enlivening scene!The banks that wore a smiling green,With rank defilement overspread,Bewail their flowery beauties dead.The stream polluted, dark, and dull,Diffused into a Stygian pool,Through lifes last melancholy yearsIs fed with overf...
William Cowper
First and Last
Upon the borderlands of being,Where life draws hardly breathBetween the lights and shadows fleeingFast as a word one saith,Two flowers rejoice our eyesight, seeingThe dawns of birth and death.Behind the babe his dawn is lyingHalf risen with notes of mirthFrom all the winds about it flyingThrough new-born heaven and earth:Before bright age his day for dyingDawns equal-eyed with birth.Equal the dews of even and dawn,Equal the suns eye seenA hands breadth risen and half withdrawnBut no bright hour betweenBrings aught so bright by stream or lawnTo noonday growths of green.Which flower of life may smell the sweeterTo loves insensual sense,Which fragrance move with offering meeterHis soothed omnipote...
April.
Tell me, eyes, what 'tis ye're seeking;For ye're saying something sweet,Fit the ravish'd ear to greet,Eloquently, softly speaking.Yet I see now why ye're roving;For behind those eyes so bright,To itself abandon'd quite,Lies a bosom, truthful, loving,One that it must fill with pleasure'Mongst so many, dull and blind,One true look at length to find,That its worth can rightly treasure.Whilst I'm lost in studying everTo explain these cyphers duly,To unravel my looks trulyIn return be your endeavour!
Sonnet.
My heart is sick with longing, tho' I feedOn hope; Time goes with such a heavy paceThat neither brings nor takes from thy embrace,As if he slept - forgetting his old speed:For, as in sunshine only we can readThe march of minutes on the dial's face,So in the shadows of this lonely placeThere is no love, and Time is dead indeed.But when, dear lady, I am near thy heart,Thy smile is time, and then so swift it flies,It seems we only meet to tear apart,With aching hands and lingering of eyes.Alas, alas! that we must learn hours' flightBy the same light of love that makes them bright!
Thomas Hood