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A Dead Rose
O Rose! who dares to name thee?No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet;But pale, and hard, and dry, as stubble-wheat,Kept seven years in a drawer, thy titles shame thee.The breeze that used to blow theeBetween the hedgerow thorns, and take awayAn odour up the lane to last all day,If breathing now, unsweetened would forego thee.The sun that used to smite thee,And mix his glory in thy gorgeous urn,Till beam appeared to bloom, and flower to burn,If shining now, with not a hue would light thee.The dew that used to wet thee,And, white first, grow incarnadined, becauseIt lay upon thee where the crimson was,If dropping now, would darken where it met thee.The fly that lit upon thee,To stretch the tendrils of its tiny fe...
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The Passionate Shepherd.
Those eyes that hold the hand of every heart, That hand that holds the heart of every eye,That wit that goes beyond all Nature's art, The sense too deep for Wisdom to descry;That eye, that hand, that wit, that heavenly senseDoth show my only mistress' excellence.O eyes that pierce into the purest heart! O hands that hold the highest thoughts in thrall!O wit that weighs the depth of all desert! O sense that shews the secret sweet of all!The heaven of heavens with heavenly power preserve thee,Love but thyself, and give me leave to serve thee.To serve, to live to look upon those eyes, To look, to live to kiss that heavenly hand,To sound that wit that doth amaze the mind, To know that sense, no sense can understand,To ...
Nicholas Breton
On The Receipt Of My Mothers Picture Out Of Norfolk, The Gift Of My Cousin, Ann Bodham.
O that those lips had language! Life has passdWith me but roughly since I heard thee last.Those lips are thinethy own sweet smile I see,The same that oft in childhood solaced me;Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!The meek intelligence of those dear eyes(Blest be the art that can immortalize,The art that baffles Times tyrannic claimTo quench it) here shines on me still the same.Faithful remembrancer of one so dear,O welcome guest, though unexpected here:Who bidst me honour with an artless song,Affectionate, a mother lost so long.I will obey, not willingly alone,But gladly, as the precept were her own:And, while that face renews my filial grief,Fancy shall weave a charm for my re...
William Cowper
Juliet And Her Romeo
(With Mr. Dicksee's Picture)Take 'this of Juliet and her Romeo,'Dear Heart of mine, for though yon budding skyYearns o'er Verona, and so long agoThat kiss was kissed; yet surely Thou and I,Surely it is, whom morning tears apart,As ruthless men tear tendrilled ivy down:Is not Verona warm within thy gown,And Mantua all the world save where thou art?O happy grace of lovers of old time,Living to love like gods, and dead to liveSymbols and saints for us who follow them;Even bitter Death must sweets to lovers give:See how they wear their tears for diadem,Throned on the star of an unshaken rhyme.
Richard Le Gallienne
Pain And Time Strive Not.
What part of the dread eternityAre those strange minutes that I gain,Mazed with the doubt of love and pain,When I thy delicate face may see,A little while before farewell?What share of the world's yearning-tideThat flash, when new day bare and whiteBlots out my half-dream's faint delight,And there is nothing by my side,And well remembered is farewell?What drop in the grey flood of tearsThat time, when the long day toiled through,Worn out, shows nought for me to do,And nothing worth my labour bearsThe longing of that last farewell?What pity from the heavens above,What heed from out eternity,What word from the swift world for me?Speak, heed, and pity, O tender love,Who knew'st the days before farewell!
William Morris
The Garden Of Dreams
Not while I live may I forgetThat garden which my spirit trod!Where dreams were flowers, wild and wet,And beautiful as God.Not while I breathe, awake, adream,Shall live again for me those hours,When, in its mystery and gleam,I met her 'mid the flowers.Eyes, talismanic heliotrope,Beneath mesmeric lashes, whereThe sorceries of love and hopeHad made a shining lair.And daydawn brows, whereover hungThe twilight of dark locks: wild birds,Her lips, that spoke the rose's tongueOf fragrance-voweled words.I will not tell of cheeks and chin,That held me as sweet language holds;Nor of the eloquence withinHer breasts' twin-moonéd molds.Nor of her body's languorousWind-grace, that glanced like starlight throughHer clinging...
Madison Julius Cawein
Too Late.
Had we but met in other days,Had we but loved in other ways,Another light and hope had shone On your life and my own.In sweet but hopeless reveriesI fancy how your wistful eyesHad saved me, had I known their power In fate's imperious hour;How loving you, beloved of God,And following you, the path I trodHad led me, through your love and prayers, To God's love unawares:And how our beings joined as oneHad passed through checkered shade and sun,Until the earth our lives had given, With little change, to heaven.God knows why this was not to be.You bloomed from childhood far from me.The sunshine of the favoured place That knew your youth and grace.And when your eyes, so fair and fre...
John Hay
Like Loves His Like.
Like will to like, each creature loves his kind;Chaste words proceed still from a bashful mind.
Robert Herrick
Wearies my Love?
Wearies my love of my letters?Does she my silence command?Sunders she Love's rosy fettersAs though they were woven of sand?Tires she too of each tokenIndited with many a sigh?Are all her promises broken?And must I love on till I die?Thinks my dear love that I blame herWith what was a burden to part?Ah, no!--with affection I'll name herWhile lingers a pulse in my heart.Although she has clouded with sadness,And blighted the bloom of my years,I lover still, even to madness,And bless her through showers of tears.My pen I have laid down in sorrow,The songs of my lute I forego:From neither assistance I'll borrowTo utter my heart-seated wo!But peace to her bosom, whereverHer thoughts or her footsteps may stray...
George Pope Morris
Song
Shall I, wasting in despair,Die, because a woman's fair?Or make pale my cheeks with care'Cause another's rosy are?Be she fairer than the day,Or the flow'ry meads in May;If she be not so to me,What care I how fair she be.Should my heart be grieved or pined'Cause I see a woman kind?Or a well-disposèd natureJoinèd with a lovely creature?Be she meeker, kinder thanTurtle-dove or pelican:If she be not so to me,What care I how kind she be.Shall a woman's virtues moveMe to perish for her love?Or, her well-deserving known,Make me quite forget mine own?Be she with that goodness blestWhich may gain her name of bestIf she be not such to me,What care I how good she be.'Cause her fortune seems...
George Wither
Dorothy.
Dear little Dorothy, she is no more!I have wandered world-wide, from shore to shore,I have seen as great beauties as ever were wed;But none can console me for Dorothy dead.Dear little Dorothy! How strange it seemsThat her face is less real than the faces of dreams;That the love which kept true, and the lips which so spoke,Are more lost than my heart, which died not when it broke!
Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
Indifference
She is so dear the wildflowers nearEach path she passes by,Are over fain to kiss againHer feet and then to die.She is so fair the wild birds thereThat sing upon the bough,Have learned the staff of her sweet laugh,And sing no other now.Alas! that she should never see,Should never care to know,The wildflower's love, the bird's above,And his, who loves her so!
To Frances
Dear love, life has dewy mornings, And the shadeless blaze of noon,Flowers, that we stop to gather, That fade from our hands so soonDear love, there are meetings, partings, We have sunshine, we have shade,There's no continuing city That our human hands have madeWe go onward, joy and sorrow Checkers all the path we tread,But our Father loves His children And with loving care they're led.Dear love, His great wisdom chooseth The path that we both have trod,And through storm, and calm, and sunshine, We rest in the hand of God
Nora Pembroke
Mutability.
1.The flower that smiles to-dayTo-morrow dies;All that we wish to stayTempts and then flies.What is this world's delight?Lightning that mocks the night,Brief even as bright.2.Virtue, how frail it is!Friendship how rare!Love, how it sells poor blissFor proud despair!But we, though soon they fall,Survive their joy, and allWhich ours we call.3.Whilst skies are blue and bright,Whilst flowers are gay,Whilst eyes that change ere nightMake glad the day;Whilst yet the calm hours creep,Dream thou - and from thy sleepThen wake to weep.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Her Star.
When the heavens throb and vibrateAll along their silver veins,To the mellow storm of musicSweeping o'er the starry trains,Heard by few, as erst by shepherdsOn the far Chaldean plains:Not the blazing, torch-like planets,Not the Pleiads wild and free,Not Arcturus, Mars, Uranus,Bring the brightest dreams to me;But I gaze in rapt devotionOn the central star of three.Central star of three that tingleIn the balmy southern sky;One above, and one below it,Dreamily they pale and die,As two lesser minds might dwindle,When some great soul, passing by,Stops, and reads their cherished secrets,With a calm and godlike air,Luring all their radiance from themLeaving a dim twilight there,Something vague, and...
Charles Sangster
Lines Written In The Bay Of Lerici.
She left me at the silent timeWhen the moon had ceased to climbThe azure path of Heaven's steep,And like an albatross asleep,Balanced on her wings of light,Hovered in the purple night,Ere she sought her ocean nestIn the chambers of the West.She left me, and I stayed aloneThinking over every toneWhich, though silent to the ear,The enchanted heart could hear,Like notes which die when born, but stillHaunt the echoes of the hill;And feeling ever - oh, too much! -The soft vibration of her touch,As if her gentle hand, even now,Lightly trembled on my brow;And thus, although she absent were,Memory gave me all of herThat even Fancy dares to claim: -Her presence had made weak and tameAll passions, and I lived alone
Vine And Sycamore
I.Here where a tree and its wild liana,Leaning over the streamlet, grow,Once a nymph, like the moon'd Diana,Sat in the ages long ago.Sat with a mortal. with whom she had mated,Sat and laughed with a mortal youth,Ere he of the forest, the god who hated,Saw and changed to a form uncouth....II.Once in the woods she had heard a shepherd,Heard a reed in a golden glade;Followed, and clad in the skin of a leopard,Found him fluting within the shade.Found him sitting with bare brown shoulder,Lithe and strong as a sapling oak,And leaning over a mossy boulder,Love in her wildwood heart awoke.III.White she was as a dogwood flower,Pinkly white as a wild-crab bloom,Sweetly white as a hawtree bower
What Wor it?
What wor it made me love thee, lass?Aw connot tell;Aw know it worn't for thi brass; -Tho' poor miselAw'd moor nor thee, aw think, if owt,An what aw had wor next to nowt.Aw didn't love thi 'coss thi faceWor fair to see:For tha wor th' plainest lass i'th' place,An as for me,They called me "nooasy," "long-legs," "walkin prop,"An sed aw freetened customers throo th' shop.Aw used to read i' Fairy booksOv e'en soa breet,Ov gowden hair, angelic looks,An smiles soa sweet;Aw used to fancy when aw'd older grown,Aw'd claim some lovely Fairy for mi own.An weel aw recollect that neet, -'Twor th' furst o'th' year,Aw tuk thi hooam, soaked throo wi' sleet,An aw'd a fearLest th' owd man's clog should ...
John Hartley