Love

I gave her a rose in early June,
Fed with the sun and the dew,
Each petal I said is a note in the tune,
The rose is the whole tune through and through,
The tune is the whole red-hearted rose,
Flush and form, honey and hue,
Lull with the cadence and throb to the close,
I love you, I love you, I love you.

She gave me a rose in early June,
Fed with the sun and the dew,
Each petal she said is a mount in the moon,
The rose is the whole moon through and through,
The moon is the whole pale-hearted rose,
Round and radiance, burnish and blue,
Break in the flood-tide that murmurs and flows,
I love you, I love you, I love you.

This is our love in early June,
Fed with the sun and the dew,
Moonlight and roses hid in a tune,
The roses are music th...

Five months ago the stream did flow,
The lilies bloomed within the sedge,
And we were lingering to and fro,
Where none will track thee in this snow,
Along the stream, beside the hedge.
Ah, Sweet, be free to love and go!
For if I do not hear thy foot,
The frozen river is as mute,
The flowers have dried down to the root:
And why, since these be changed since May,
Shouldst thou change less than they.

And slow, slow as the winter snow
The tears have drifted to mine eyes;
And my poor cheeks, five months ago
Set blushing at thy praises so,
Put paleness on for a disguise.
Ah, Sweet, be free to praise and go!
For if my face is turned too pale,
It was thine oath that first did fail,
It was thy love proved false and frail,
And why, since these ...

Quella fenestra, ove l' un sol si vede.

RECOLLECTIONS OF LOVE.


    That window where my sun is often seen
Refulgent, and the world's at morning's hours;
And that, where Boreas blows, when winter lowers,
And the short days reveal a clouded scene;
That bench of stone where, with a pensive mien,
My Laura sits, forgetting beauty's powers;
Haunts where her shadow strikes the walls or flowers,
And her feet press the paths or herbage green:
The place where Love assail'd me with success;
And spring, the fatal time that, first observed,
Revives the keen remembrance every year;
With looks and words, that o'er me have preserved
A power no length of time can render less,
Call to my eyes the sadly-soothing tear.

PENN.


    Tha...

There lies a photograph of you
Deep in a box of broken things.
This was the face I loved and knew
Five years ago, when life had wings;

Five years ago, when through a town
Of bright and soft and shadowy bowers
We walked and talked and trailed our gown
Regardless of the cinctured hours.

The precepts that we held I kept;
Proudly my ways with you I went:
We lived our dreams while others slept,
And did not shrink from sentiment.

Now I go East and you stay West
And when between us Europe lies
I shall forget what I loved best
Away from lips and hands and eyes.

But we were Gods then: we were they
Who laughed at fools, believed in friends,
And drank to all that golden day
Before us, which this poem ends.

(Suggested by the lives of Napoleon and Josephine.)


I.

One night was full of rapture and delight -
    Of reunited arms and swooning kisses,
    And all the unnamed and unnumbered blisses
Which fond souls find in love of love at night.

Heart beat with heart, and each clung into each
    With twining arms that did but loose their hold
    To cling still closer; and fond glances told
These truths for which there is no uttered speech.

There was sweet laughter and endearing words,
    Made broken by the kiss that could not wait,
    And cooing sounds as of dear little birds
That in spring-time love and woo and mate.

And languid sighs that breathed of love's content
And all too soon this night of rapture went.


II.

If some day this body of mine were burned
(It found no favour alas! with you)
And the ashes scattered abroad, unurned,
Would Love die also, would Thought die too?
    But who can answer, or who can trust,
    No dreams would harry the windblown dust?

Were I laid away in the furrows deep
Secure from jackal and passing plough,
Would your eyes not follow me still through sleep
Torment me then as they torture now?
    Would you ever have loved me, Golden Eyes,
    Had I done aught better or otherwise?

Was I overspeechful, or did you yearn
When I sat silent, for songs or speech?
Ah, Beloved, I had been so apt to learn,
So apt, had you only cared to teach.
    But time for silence and song is done,
    You wanted nothing, my Golden Sun!

W...

Di pensier in pensier, di monte in monte.

DISTANCE AND SOLITUDE.


    From hill to hill I roam, from thought to thought,
With Love my guide; the beaten path I fly,
For there in vain the tranquil life is sought:
If 'mid the waste well forth a lonely rill,
Or deep embosom'd a low valley lie,
In its calm shade my trembling heart's still;
And there, if Love so will,
I smile, or weep, or fondly hope, or fear.
While on my varying brow, that speaks the soul,
The wild emotions roll,
Now dark, now bright, as shifting skies appear;
That whosoe'er has proved the lover's state
Would say, He feels the flame, nor knows his future fate.

On mountains high, in forests drear and wide,
I find repose, and from the throng'd resort
Of man turn fea...

What shall we do for Love these days?
How shall we make an altar-blaze
To smite the horny eyes of men
With the renown of our Heaven,
And to the unbelievers prove
Our service to our dear god, Love?
What torches shall we lift above
The crowd that pushes through the mire,
To amaze the dark heads with strange fire?
I should think I were much to blame,
If never I held some fragrant flame
Above the noises of the world,
And openly 'mid men's hurrying stares,
Worshipt before the sacred fears
That are like flashing curtains furl'd
Across the presence of our lord Love.
Nay, would that I could fill the gaze
Of the whole earth with some great praise
Made in a marvel for men's eyes,
Some tower of glittering masonries,
Therein such a spirit flourishing

Let us go far from here!
Here there is sadness in the early year:
Here sorrow waits where joy went laughing late:
The sicklied face of heaven hangs like hate
Above the woodland and the meadowland;
And Spring hath taken fire in her hand
Of frost and made a dead bloom of her face,
Which was a flower of marvel once and grace,
And sweet serenity and stainless glow.
Delay not. Let us go.

Let us go far away
Into the sunrise of a fairer May:
Where all the nights resign them to the moon,
And drug their souls with odor and soft tune,
And tell their dreams in starlight: where the hours
Teach immortality with fadeless flowers;
And all the day the bee weights down the bloom,
And all the night the moth shakes strange perfume,
Like music, from the flower-bel...

I.

How soft is the moon on Glengariff,
The rocks seem to melt with the light:
Oh! would I were there with dear Fanny,
To tell her that love is as bright;
And nobly the sun of July
O'er the waters of Adragoole shines--
Oh! would that I saw the green banner
Blaze there over conquering lines.


II.

Oh! love is more fair than the moonlight,
And glory more grand than the sun:
And there is no rest for a brave heart,
Till its bride and its laurels are won;
But next to the burst of our banner,
And the smile of dear Fanny, I crave
The moon on the rocks of Glengariff--
The sun upon Adragoole's wave.

In the endless nights, from my bed, where sleepless in anguish I lie,
I startle the stillness and gloom with a bitter and strong cry:
0 Love! 0 Beloved long lost! come down from thy Heaven above,
For my heart is wasting and dying in uttermost famine for love!

Come down for a moment! oh, come! Come serious and mild
And pale, as thou wert on this earth, thou adorable Child!
Or come as thou art, with thy sanctitude, triumph and bliss,
For a garment of glory about thee; and give me one kiss,
One tender and pitying look of thy tenderest eyes,
One word of solemn assurance and truth that
the soul with its love never dies!

In the endless nights, from my bed, where sleepless in frenzy I lie,
I cleave through the crushing gloom with a bitter and deadly cry:
Oh! where have ...

Oh night and sleep,
Ye are so soft and deep,
I am so weary, come ye soon to me.
Oh hours that creep,
With so much time to weep,
I am so tired, can ye no swifter be?

Come, night, anear;
I'll whisper in thine ear
What makes me so unhappy, full of care;
Dear night, I die
For love that all men buy
With tears, and know not it is dark despair.

Dear night, I pray,
How is it that men say
That love is sweet? It is not sweet to me.
For one boy's sake
A poor girl's heart must break;
So sweet, so true, and yet it could not be!

Oh, I loved well,
Such love as none can tell:
It was so true, it could not make him know:
For he was blind,
All light and all unkind:
Oh, had he known, would he have hurt me so?

Oh nigh...

    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.

In my thought I see you stand with a path on either hand,
--Hills that look into the sun, and there a river'd meadow-land.
And your lost voice with the things that it decreed across me thrills,
    When you thought, and chose the hills.

'If it prove a life of pain, greater have I judged the gain.
With a singing soul for music's sake, I climb and meet the rain,
And I choose, whilst I am calm, my thought and labouring to be
    Unconsoled by sympathy.'

But how dared you use me so?    For you bring my ripe years low
To your child's whim and a destiny your child-soul could not know.
And that small voice legislating I revolt against, with tears.
    But you mark not, through the years.

'To the mountain leads my way.    If the plains are green to-day,
These my ba...

Emma! 'tis early time for thee
To hear the sounds of minstrelsy,
That breathe around the rosy shrine
Of honest old Saint Valentine.

Too young art thou for strains of love;
'Tis not thy passion I would move;
Instead of lover's strains, I send
The cordial wishes of a friend.

Nobly has Nature done her duty,
To give thee of thy mother's beauty
So large a share - oh! then be thine
The mental charms that in her shine!

And may thy father's taste refin'd
Still add new graces to thy mind;
And may'st thou to each charm impart
The gen'rous frankness of his heart.

Then, my sweet Emma! thou shall move
In many a heart more genuine love
Than ever warm'd poetic line,
Or sigh'd in any Valentine.

Yes! yes! I dare say it is so,
And you should be pitied, but how could I know,
Watching alone by the moon-lit bay;
But that is past for many a day,
For the woman that loved, died years ago,
    Years ago.

She had loving eyes, with a wistful look
In their depths that day, and I know you took
Her face in your hands and read it o'er,
As if you should never see it more;
You were right, for she died long years ago,
    Years ago.

Had I trusted you - for trust, you know
Will keep love's fire forever aglow;
Then what would have mattered storm or sun,
But the watching - the waiting, all is done;
For the woman that loved, died years ago,
    Years ago.

Yes; I think you are constant, true and good,
I am tired, and would love you if I cou...

Heaped in raven loops and masses
Over temples smooth and fair,
Have you marked it, as she passes,
Gleam and shadow mingled there,
Braided strands of midnight air,
Helen's hair?

Deep with dreams and starry mazes
Of the thought that in them lies,
Have you seen them, as she raises
Them in gladness or surprise,
Two gray gleams of daybreak skies,
Helen's eyes?

Moist with dew and honied wafters
Of a music sweet that slips,
Have you marked them, brimmed with laughter's
Song and sunshine to their tips,
Rose-buds whence the fragrance drips,
Helen's lips?

He who sees her needs must love her:
But, beware! avoid love's dart!
He who loves her must discover
Nature overlooked one part,
In this masterpiece of art
Helen's he...

An aged satyr sought
Around my Muse to pass,
Attempting to pay court,
And eyed her fondly through his glass.

By Phoebus' golden torch,
By Luna's pallid light,
Around her temple's porch
Crept the unhappy sharp-eared wight;

And warbled many a lay,
Her beauty's praise to sing,
And fiercely scraped away
On his discordant fiddle-string.

With tears, too, swelled his eyes,
As large as nuts, or larger;
He gasped forth heavy sighs,
Like music from Silenus' charger.

The Muse sat still, and played
Within her grotto fair,
And peevishly surveyed
Signor Adonis Goatsfoot there.

"Who ever would kiss thee,
Thou ugly, dirty dunce?
Wouldst thou a gallant be,
As Midas was Apollo once?

"Speak out, old horn...