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Song
My Fair, no beauty of thine will last Save in my love's eternity. Thy smiles, that light thee fitfully,Are lost for ever-their moment past- Except the few thou givest to me.Thy sweet words vanish day by day, As all breath of mortality; Thy laughter, done, must cease to be,And all thy dear tones pass away, Except the few that sing to me.Hide then within my heart, oh, hide All thou art loth should go from thee. Be kinder to thyself and me.My cupful from this river's tide Shall never reach the long sad sea.
Alice Meynell
A Lament
Over thy head, in joyful wanderingsThrough heaven's wide spaces, free,Birds fly with music in their wings;And from the blue, rough seaThe fishes flash and leap;There is a life of loveliest thingsO'er thee, so fast asleep.In the deep West the heavens grow heavenlier,Eve after eve; and stillThe glorious stars remember to appear;The roses on the hillAre fragrant as before:Only thy face, of all that's dear,I shall see nevermore!
Manmohan Ghose
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet LXXII
Desire, though thou my old companion art,And oft so clings to my pure loue that IOne from the other scarcely can discrie,While each doth blowe the fier of my hart;Now from thy fellowship I needs must part;Venus is taught with Dians wings to flie;I must no more in thy sweet passions lie;Vertues gold must now head my Cupids dart.Seruice and honour, wonder with delight,Feare to offend, will worthie to appeare,Care shining in mine eyes, faith in my sprite;These things are left me by my onely Deare:But thou, Desire, because thou wouldst haue all,Now banisht art; but yet, alas, how shall?
Philip Sidney
Magical Nature
Flower, I never fancied, jewel, I profess you!Bright I see and soft I feel the outside of a flower.Save but glow inside and jewel, I should guess you,Dim to sight and rough to touch: the glory is the dower.You, forsooth, a flower? Nay, my love, a jewel,Jewel at no mercy of a moment in your prime!Time may fray the flower-face: kind be time or cruel,Jewel, from each facet, flash your laugh at time!
Robert Browning
Light: an Epicede
To Philip Bourke MarstonLove will not weep because the seal is brokenThat sealed upon a life beloved and briefDarkness, and let but song break through for tokenHow deep, too far for even thy song's relief,Slept in thy soul the secret springs of grief.Thy song may soothe full many a soul hereafter,As tears, if tears will come, dissolve despair;As here but late, with smile more bright than laughter,Thy sweet strange yearning eyes would seem to bearWitness that joy might cleave the clouds of care.Two days agone, and love was one with pityWhen love gave thought wings toward the glimmering goalWhere, as a shrine lit in some darkling city,Shone soft the shrouded image of thy soul:And now thou art healed of life; thou art healed, and whol...
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Sounds From The Convent.
"Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,Sober, steadfast and demure." -- [Milton]White-robed nun, I pray thee tell me Whatsoe'er my life shall be;Thou of God art purely chosen, Ne'er can I be like to thee.There is sunlight in the shadow Of the lives we live below;There is starlight in the darkness Of the night of human woe.Yet I pray thee, sweet-voiced woman, Tell me of thy life and thee;Can the soul to heaven given Yield its secrets unto me?Nevermore the earth shall claim thee, Only lilies bloom for thee;All the world is full of beauty That thy eyes may never see.On the hill the daisies springing, Lift their heads to greet the morn;Yet tho...
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Sunlight And Sea
Give me the sunlight and the seaAnd who shall take my heaven from me?Light of the Sun, Life of the Sun,O happy, bold companion,Whose golden laughters round me run,Making wine of the blue airWith wild-rose kisses everywhere,Browning the limb, flushing the cheek,Apple-fragrant, leopard-sleek,Dancing from thy red-curtained EastLike a Nautch-girl to my feast,Proud because her lord, the Spring,Praised the way those anklets ring;Or wandering like a white Greek maidLeaf-dappled through the dancing shade,Where many a green-veined leaf imprintsBreast and limb with emerald tints,That softly net her silken shapeBut let the splendour still escape,While rosy ghosts of roses flowOver the supple rose and snow.But swee...
Alfred Noyes
Pleasure
A Short Poem or Else Not Say ITrue pleasure breathes not city air,Nor in Art's temples dwells,In palaces and towers whereThe voice of Grandeur dwells.No! Seek it where high Nature holdsHer court 'mid stately groves,Where she her majesty unfolds,And in fresh beauty moves;Where thousand birds of sweetest song,The wildly rushing stormAnd hundred streams which glide along,Her mighty concert form!Go where the woods in beauty sleepBathed in pale Luna's light,Or where among their branches sweepThe hollow sounds of night.Go where the warbling nightingaleIn gushes rich doth sing,Till all the lonely, quiet valeWith melody doth ring.Go, sit upon a mountain steep,And view the prospect ...
Charlotte Bronte
Sonnet CLXIV.
L' aura celeste che 'n quel verde Lauro.HER HAIR AND EYES. The heavenly airs from yon green laurel roll'd,Where Love to Phoebus whilom dealt his stroke,Where on my neck was placed so sweet a yoke,That freedom thence I hope not to behold,O'er me prevail, as o'er that Arab oldMedusa, when she changed him to an oak;Nor ever can the fairy knot be brokeWhose light outshines the sun, not merely gold;I mean of those bright locks the curlèd snareWhich folds and fastens with so sweet a graceMy soul, whose humbleness defends alone.Her mere shade freezes with a cold despairMy heart, and tinges with pale fear my face;And oh! her eyes have power to make me stone.MACGREGOR.
Francesco Petrarca
Vayu the Wind
Ah, Wind, I have always loved theeSince those far off nightsWhen I lay beneath the vinesA prey to strange delights,For among my tressesThy soft caressesWere sweet as a lover's to me.Later thou grewest more wanton, or I more shy,And after the bath I drew my garments close,Fearing thy soft persuasion amongst my hairWhen thou camest fresh with the scent of some ruffled rose.Ah, Wind, thou hast lain with the Desert,I know her savour well,And the spices wherewith she scents her breasts -She who has known such countless loversYet rarely borne a city among her sands -Thou comest as one from a night of love,Thy breath is broken and hard, -Bringing echoes of lonely things,Vast and cruel, that the soft and golden sands...
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
Memory
A treasured link of shining pearls, A by-gone melody,A shower of tears with smiles between-- And this is memory.A thing so light a breath of air May waft its life away;A thing so dark that moments of pain Seem like some endless day.A careless word may wound the heart, And quickly it may die;Yet in the seas of memory Forever it will lie.And sometimes when the tide rolls back Its waves of joy and pain,That careless word, though long forgot, Will wound the heart again.The restless seas of memory Are vast and deep and wide;And every deed that we can know Sleeps in that tireless tide.Upon the thoughtless lives of men Its waves in mockery roll;And sweep a might of bitter...
Pearls.
Baroque, but beautiful, between the lunes,The valves of nacre of a mussel-shell,Behold, a pearl! shaped like the burnished bellOf some strange blossom that long afternoonsOf summer coax to open: all the moon'sChaste lustre in it; hues that only dwellWith purity It takes me, like a spell,Back to a day when, whistling truant tunes,A barefoot boy I waded 'mid the rocks,Searching for shells deep in the creek's slow swirl,Unconscious of the pearls that 'round me lay:While, 'mid wild-roses, all her tomboy locksBlond-blowing, stood, unnoticed then, a girl,My sweetheart once, the pearl I flung away.
Madison Julius Cawein
Love.
Who veileth love should first have vanquished fate. She folded up the dream in her deep heart, Her fair full lips were silent on that smart,Thick fringèd eyes did on the grasses wait.What good? one eloquent blush, but one, and straight The meaning of a life was known; for art Is often foiled in playing nature's part,And time holds nothing long inviolate.Earth's buried seed springs up - slowly, or fast:The ring came home, that one in ages past Flung to the keeping of unfathomed seas: And golden apples on the mystic treesWere sought and found, and borne away at last, Though watched of the divine Hesperides.
Jean Ingelow
The Parting.
One summer's morning I heard a lark Singing to heaven, a sweet-throated bird; One winter's night I was glad in the dark Because of the wondrous song I had heard. The joy of life, I have heard you say, Is my love, my laughter, my smiles and tears; When I have gone on the long, strange way, Let these stay with you through all the years - These be the lark's song. What is love worth That cannot crowd, in the time that's given To two like us on this gray old earth, Such bliss as will last till we reach heaven? Dear one, think oft of the full, glad years, And, thinking of them, forget to weep. Whisper: "Remembrance holds no tears!" And kiss my mouth when I fall on sleep.
Jean Blewett
The Vision Of Love
The twilight fleeted away in pearl on the stream,And night, like a diamond dome, stood still in our dream.Your eyes like burnished stones or as stars were brightWith the sudden vision that made us one with the night.We loved in infinite spaces, forgetting hereThe breasts that were lit with life and the lips so near;Till the wizard willows waved in the wind and drewMe away from the fulness of love and down to you.Our love was so vast that it filled the heavens up:But the soft white form I held was an empty cup,When the willows called me back to earth with their sigh,And we moved as shades through the deep that was you and I.
George William Russell
So Warmly We Met. (Hungarian Air.)
So warmly we met and so fondly we parted, That which was the sweeter even I could not tell,--That first look of welcome her sunny eyes darted, Or that tear of passion, which blest our farewell.To meet was a heaven and to part thus another,-- Our joy and our sorrow seemed rivals in bliss;Oh! Cupid's two eyes are not liker each other In smiles and in tears than that moment to this.The first was like day-break, new, sudden, delicious,-- The dawn of a pleasure scarce kindled up yet;The last like the farewell of daylight, more precious, More glowing and deep, as 'tis nearer its set.Our meeting, tho' happy, was tinged by a sorrow To think that such happiness could not remain;While our parting, tho' sad, gave a hope that to-morrow...
Thomas Moore
To J.M.B.
'Oh, were I a heliotrope, I would play poet, And blow a breeze of fragrance To you; and none should know it. 'Your form like the stately elm When Phoebus gilds the morning ray; Your cheeks like the ocean bed That blooms a rose in May. 'Your words are wise and bright, I bequeath them to you a legacy given; And when your spirit takes its flight, May it bloom aflower in heaven. 'My tongue in flattering language spoke, And sweeter silence never broke in busiest street or loneliest glen. I take you with the flashes of my pen. 'Consider the lilies, how they grow; They toil not, yet are fair, Gems and flowers and Solomon's seal. ...
Louisa May Alcott
Quia Multum Amavi
Dear Heart, I think the young impassioned priestWhen first he takes from out the hidden shrineHis God imprisoned in the Eucharist,And eats the bread, and drinks the dreadful wine,Feels not such awful wonder as I feltWhen first my smitten eyes beat full on thee,And all night long before thy feet I kneltTill thou wert wearied of Idolatry.Ah! hadst thou liked me less and loved me more,Through all those summer days of joy and rain,I had not now been sorrow's heritor,Or stood a lackey in the House of Pain.Yet, though remorse, youth's white-faced seneschal,Tread on my heels with all his retinue,I am most glad I loved thee think of allThe suns that go to make one speedwell blue!
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde