Love

Ancient Person, for whom I
All the flattering youth defy,
Long be it e'er thou grow old,
Aching, shaking, crazy cold;
But still continue as thou art,
Ancient Person of my heart.

On thy withered lips and dry,
Which like barren furrows lie,
Brooding kisses I will pour,
Shall thy youthful heart restore,
Such kind show'rs in autumn fall,
And a second spring recall;
Nor from thee will ever part,
Ancient Person of my heart.

Thy nobler parts, which but to name
In our sex would be counted shame,
By ages frozen grasp possest,
From their ice shall be released,
And, soothed by my reviving hand,
In former warmth and vigour stand.
All a lover's wish can reach,
For thy joy my love shall teach;
And for thy pleasure shall improve

                    'It is silly sooth,
        And dallies with the innocence of love,
        Like the old age.'

        --Twelfth Night, II. 4.


The Text.--This ballad, concluding a small class of three--Lord Thomas and Fair Annet, and Fair Margaret and Sweet William being the other two--is distinguished by the fact that the lady dies of hope deferred. It is a foolish ballad, at the opposite pole to Lord Thomas and Fair Annet, and is pre-eminently one of the class meant only to be sung, with an effective burden. The text given here, therefore, is that of a broadside of the year 1846.

The Story in outline is extremely popular in German and Scandinavian literature. Of the former the commonest is Der Ritter und die Maid, also found north of Germany; twenty-...

If, after all, you still will doubt and fear me,
    And think this heart to other loves will stray,
If I must swear, then, lovely doubter, hear me;
    By every dream I have when thou'rt away,
By every throb I feel when thou art near me,
    I love but thee--I love but thee!

By those dark eyes, where light is ever playing,
    Where Love in depth of shadow holds his throne,
And by those lips, which give whate'er thou'rt saying,
    Or grave or gay, a music of its own,
A music far beyond all minstrel's playing,
    I love but thee--I love but thee!

By that fair brow, where Innocence reposes,
    As pure as moonlight sleeping upon snow,
And by that cheek, whose fleeting blush discloses
    A hue too bright to bless this world below,
And only fit to ...

Not while the fever of the blood is strong,
The heart throbs loud, the eyes are veiled, no less
With passion than with tears, the Muse shall bless
The poet-soul to help and soothe with song.
Not then she bids his trembling lips express
The aching gladness, the voluptuous pain.
Life is his poem then; flesh, sense, and brain
One full-stringed lyre attuned to happiness.
But when the dream is done, the pulses fail,
The day's illusion, with the day's sun set,
He, lonely in the twilight, sees the pale
Divine Consoler, featured like Regret,
Enter and clasp his hand and kiss his brow.
Then his lips ope to sing - as mine do now.

Love, wandering through the golden maze
    Of my beloved's hair,
Traced every lock with fond delays,
    And, doting, lingered there.
And soon he found 'twere vain to fly;
    His heart was close confined,
For, every ringlet was a tie--
    A chain by beauty twined.

Come to me in the silence of the night;
    Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
    As sunlight on a stream;
        Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
    Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
    Where thirsting longing eyes
        Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
    My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
    Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
        Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago!

Let us be drunk, and for a while forget,
Forget, and, ceasing even from regret,
Live without reason and despite of rhyme,
As in a dream preposterous and sublime,
Where place and hour and means for once are met.

Where is the use of effort?    Love and debt
And disappointment have us in a net.
Let us break out, and taste the morning prime . . .
Let us be drunk.

In vain our little hour we strut and fret,
And mouth our wretched parts as for a bet:
We cannot please the tragicaster Time.
To gain the crystal sphere, the silver dime,
Where Sympathy sits dimpling on us yet,
Let us be drunk!



***



When you are old, and I am passed away -
Passed, and your face, your golden face, is gray -
I think, whate'er the end, ...

I go through wet spring woods alone,
Through sweet green woods with heart of stone,
My weary foot upon the grass
Falls heavy as I pass.
The cuckoo from the distance cries,
The lark a pilgrim in the skies;
But all the pleasant spring is drear.
I want you, dear!

I pass the summer meadows by,
The autumn poppies bloom and die;
I speak alone so bitterly
For no voice answers me.
“O lovers parting by the gate,
O robin singing to your mate,
Plead you well, for she will hear
‘I love you, dear!’”

I crouch alone, unsatisfied,
Mourning by winter’s fireside.
O Fate, what evil wind you blow.
Must this be so?
No southern breezes come to bless,
So conscious of their emptiness
My lonely arms I spread in woe,
I want you so.

A rose in my garden, the sweetest and fairest,
    Was hanging her head through the long golden hours;
And early one morning I saw her tears falling,
    And heard a low gossiping talk in the bowers.

The yellow Nasturtium, a spinster all faded,
    Was telling a Lily what ailed the poor Rose:
'That wild, roving Bee, who was hanging about her
    Has jilted her squarely, as every one knows.

'I knew when he came, with his singing and sighing,
    His airs and his speeches, so fine and so sweet,
Just how it would end; but no one would believe me,
    For all were quite ready to fall at his feet.'

'Indeed, you are wrong,' said the Lilybelle proudly,
    'I cared nothing for him.    He called on me once
And would have come often, no doubt, if I'd asked him....

I

Fragoletta, blessed one,
What think you of the light of the sun?
Do you think the dark was best,
Lying snug in mother's breast?
Ah! I knew that sweetness, too,
Fragoletta, before you!
But, Fragoletta, now you're born,
You must learn to love the morn,
Love the lovely working light,
Love the miracle of sight,
Love the thousand things to do -
Little girl, I envy you! -
Love the thousand things to see,
Love your mother, and - love me!
And some night, Fragoletta, soon,
I'll take you out to see the moon;
And for the first time, child of ours,
You shall - think of it! - look on flowers,
And smell them, too, if you are good,
And hear the green leaves in the wood
Talking, talking, all together
In the happy windy weather;
And i...

O waters fresh and sweet and clear,
Where bathed her lovely frame,
Who seems the only lady unto me;
O gentle branch and dear,
(Sighing I speak thy name,)
Thou column for her shapely thighs, her supple knee;
O grass, O flowers, which she
Swept with her gown that veiled
The angelic breast unseen;
O sacred air serene,
Whence the divine-eyed Love my heart assailed,
By all of ye be heard
This my supreme lament, my dying word.


Oh, if it be my fate
(As Heaven shall so decree)
That Love shall close for me my weeping eyes,
Some courteous friend I supplicate
Midst these to bury me,
Whilst my enfranchised spirit homeward flies;
Less dreadful death shall rise,
If I may bear this hope
To that mysterious goal.
For ne'er did weary so...

The pines were dark on Ramoth hill,
Their song was soft and low;
The blossoms in the sweet May wind
Were falling like the snow.

The blossoms drifted at our feet,
The orchard birds sang clear;
The sweetest and the saddest day
It seemed of all the year.

For, more to me than birds or flowers,
My playmate left her home,
And took with her the laughing spring,
The music and the bloom.

She kissed the lips of kith and kin,
She laid her hand in mine
What more could ask the bashful boy
Who fed her father’s kine?

She left us in the bloom of May
The constant years told o’er
Their seasons with as sweet May morns,
But she came back no more.

I walk, with noiseless feet, the round
Of uneventful years;
Still o’er and ...

It's oh in Paradise that I fain would be,
Away from earth and weariness and all beside;
Earth is too full of loss with its dividing sea,
But Paradise upbuilds the bower for the bride.

Where flowers are yet in bud while the boughs are green,
I would get quit of earth and get robed for heaven;
Putting on my raiment white within the screen,
Putting on my crown of gold whose gems are seven

Fair is the fourfold river that maketh no moan,
Fair are the trees fruit-bearing of the wood,
Fair are the gold and bdellium and the onyx stone,
And I know the gold of that land is good.

O my love, my dove, lift up your eyes
Toward the eastern gate like an opening rose;
You and I who parted will meet in Paradise,
Pass within and sing when the gates unclose.

Ah, Geraldine, lost Geraldine,
That night of love, when first we met,
You have forgotten, Geraldine -
I never dreamed you would forget.

Ah, Geraldine, sweet Geraldine,
More lovely than that Asian queen,
Scheherazade, the beautiful,
Who in her orient palace cool
Of India, for a thousand nights
And one, beside her monarch lay,
Telling - while sandal-scented lights
And music stole the soul away -
Love tales of old Arabia,
Full of enchantments and emprise -
But no enchantments like your eyes.

Ah, Geraldine, loved Geraldine,
More lovely than those maids, I ween,
Pampinea and Lauretta, who,
In gardens old of dusk and dew,
Sat with their lovers, maid and man,
In stately days Italian,
And in quaint stories, that we know
Throug...

As the inhastening tide doth roll,
Dear and desired, along the whole
    Wide shining strand, and floods the caves,
    Your love comes filling with happy waves
The open sea-shore of my soul.

But inland from the seaward spaces,
None knows, not even you, the places
    Brimmed, at your coming, out of sight,
    -The little solitudes of delight
This tide constrains in dim embraces.

You see the happy shore, wave-rimmed,
But know not of the quiet dimmed
    Rivers your coming floods and fills,
    The little pools 'mid happier hills,
My silent rivulets, over-brimmed.

What, I have secrets from you? Yes.
But, visiting Sea, your love doth press
    And reach in further than you know,
    And fills all these; and when you go,
There's l...

Somebody said, in the crowd, last eve,
    That you were married, or soon to be.
I have not thought of you, I believe,
    Since last we parted. Let me see:
Five long Summers have passed since then -
    Each has been pleasant in its own way -
And you are but one of a dozen men
    Who have played the suitor a Summer day.

But, nevertheless, when I heard your name,
    Coupled with some one's, not my own,
There burned in my bosom a sudden flame,
    That carried me back to the day that is flown.
I was sitting again by the laughing brook,
    With you at my feet, and the sky above,
And my heart was fluttering under your look -
    The unmistakable look of Love.

Again your breath, like a South wind, fanned
    My cheek, where the blushes came and...

O'er the Campagna it is dim warm weather;
    The Spring comes with a full heart silently,
    And many thoughts; a faint flash of the sea
Divides two mists; straight falls the falling feather.

With wild Spring meanings hill and plain together
    Grow pale, or just flush with a dust of flowers.
    Rome in the ages, dimmed with all her towers,
Floats in the midst, a little cloud at tether.

I fain would put my hands about thy face,
    Thou with thy thoughts, who art another Spring,
            And draw thee to me like a mournful child.

Thou lookest on me from another place;
    I touch not this day's secret, nor the thing
            That in the silence makes thy sweet eyes wild.

I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods;

I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter’d by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.

I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘T is better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.