Love

Where be those roses gone, which sweetned so our eyes?
Where those red cheeks, which oft, with faire encrease, did frame
The height of honour in the kindly badge of shame?
Who hath the crimson weeds stolne from my morning skies?
How doth the colour vade of those vermilion dies,
Which Nature self did make, and self-ingrain'd the same?
I would know by what right this palenesse ouercame
That hue whose force my hart still vnto thraldome ties?
Galens adoptiue sonnes, who by a beaten way
Their iudgements hackney on, the fault of sicknesse lay;
But feeling proofe makes me say they mistake it furre:
It is but loue which makes this paper perfit white,
To write therein more fresh the storie of delight,
Whiles Beauties reddest inke Venus for him doth sturre.

(Athenaeum, October 21, 1848)


I did not chide him, though I knew
    That he was false to me.
Chide the exhaling of the dew,
    The ebbing of the sea,
The fading of a rosy hue, -
    But not inconstancy.

Why strive for love when love is o'er?
    Why bind a restive heart? -
He never knew the pain I bore
    In saying: 'We must part;
Let us be friends and nothing more.'
    - Oh, woman's shallow art!

But it is over, it is done, -
    I hardly heed it now;
So many weary years have run
    Since then, I think not how
Things might have been, - but greet each one
    With an unruffled brow.

What time I am where others be,
    My heart seems very calm -
Stone calm; but if all go from me,
    There c...

    Blossoms crimson, white, or blue,
        Purple, pink, and every hue,
    From sunny skies, to tintings drowned
        In dusky drops of dew,
    I praise you all, wherever found,
        And love you through and through; -
            But, Blossoms On The Trees,
            With your breath upon the breeze,
    There's nothing all the world around
        As half as sweet as you!

    Could the rhymer only wring
        All the sweetness to the lees
    Of all the kisses clustering
        In juicy Used-to-bes,
    To dip his rhymes therein and sing
        The blossoms on the trees, -
    "O Blossoms on the Trees,"
        He would twitter, trill and coo,
    "However sweet, such songs as these
        Are not as sweet as you...

Sweet Summer, breathe your softest gales
To charm my lover's ear:
Ye zephyrs, tell your choicest tales
Where'er she shall appear;
And gently wave the meadow grass
Where soft she sets her feet,
For my love is a country lass,
And bonny as she's sweet.

The hedges only seem to mourn,
The willow boughs to sigh,
Though sunshine o'er the meads sojourn,
To cheer me where I lie:
The blackbird in the hedgerow thorn
Sings loud his Summer lay;
He seems to sing, both eve and morn,
"She wanders here to-day."

The skylark in the summer cloud
One cheering anthem sings,
And Mary often wanders out
To watch his trembling wings.

* * * * *

I'll wander down the river way,
And wild flower posies make,
For Nature whispers all ...

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning.
Thou dost float and run;
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of Heaven,
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,

Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we ha...

Come to me, Love!    Come on the wings of the wind!
    Fly as the ring-dove would fly to his mate!
Leave all your cares and your sorrows behind!
    Leave all the fears of your future to Fate!
Come! and our skies shall be glad with the gold
    That paled into gray when you parted from me.
Come! but remember that, just as of old,
    You must be bound, Love, and I must be free.

Life has lost savour since you and I parted;
    I have been lonely, and you have been sad.
Youth is too brief to be sorrowful-hearted -
    Come! and again let us laugh and be glad.
Lips should not sigh that are fashioned to kiss -
    Breasts should not ache that joy's secrets have found.
Come! but remember, in spite of all this,
    I must be free, Love, while you must be bound.

Here when the cloudless April days begin,
And the quaint crows flock thicker day by day,
Filling the forests with a pleasant din,
And the soiled snow creeps secretly away,
Comes the small busy sparrow, primed with glee,
First preacher in the naked wilderness,
Piping an end to all the long distress
From every fence and every leafless tree.

Now with soft slight and viewless artifice
Winter's iron work is wondrously undone;
In all the little hollows cored with ice
The clear brown pools stand simmering in the sun,
Frail lucid worlds, upon whose tremulous floors
All day the wandering water-bugs at will,
Shy mariners whose oars are never still,
Voyage and dream about the heightening shores.

The bluebird, peeping from the gnarlèd thorn,
Prattles upon...

Già fiammeggiava l' amorosa stella.

LAURA, WHO IS ILL, APPEARS TO HIM IN A DREAM, AND ASSURES HIM THAT SHE STILL LIVES.


    Throughout the orient now began to flame
The star of love; while o'er the northern sky
That, which has oft raised Juno's jealousy,
Pour'd forth its beauteous scintillating beam:
Beside her kindled hearth the housewife dame,
Half-dress'd, and slipshod, 'gan her distaff ply:
And now the wonted hour of woe drew nigh,
That wakes to tears the lover from his dream:
When my sweet hope unto my mind appear'd,
Not in the custom'd way unto my sight;
For grief had bathed my lids, and sleep had weigh'd;
Ah me, how changed that form by love endear'd!
"Why lose thy fortitude?" methought she said,
"These eyes not yet from thee ...

Listen, dearest! you must love me more,
More than you did before!
Hark, what a beating here of wings!
Never at rest,
Dear, in your breast!
Is it your heart with its flutterings,
Making a music, love, for us both?
Or merely a moth, a velvet-winged moth,
Which out of the garden's fragrance swings,
Weaving a spell,
That holds the rose and the moon in thrall?
I love you more than I can tell;
And no recall
How long ago
Our quarrel and all!
You say, you know,
A perfect pearl grows out of well,
A little friction; tiny grain
Of sand or shell
So love grew out of that moment's pain,
The heart's disdain
Since then I have thought of no one but you,
And how your heart would beat on mine,
Like light on dew.
And I thought how foolish t...

To E. B. B.


I
There they are, my fifty men and women
Naming me the fifty poems finished!
Take them, Love, the book and me together:
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.

II
Rafael made a century of sonnets,
Made and wrote them in a certain volume
Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil
Else he only used to draw Madonnas:
These, the world might view, but one, the volume.
Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you.
Did she live and love it all her lifetime
Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets,
Die, and let it drop beside her pillow
Where it lay in place of Rafael’s glory,
Rafael’s cheek so duteous and so loving,
Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter’s,
Rafael?s cheek, her love had turned a poet’s?

While gazing on the moon's light,
    A moment from her smile I turned,
To look at orbs, that, more bright,
    In lone and distant glory burned.
                But too far
                Each proud star,
    For me to feel its warming flame;
                Much more dear
                That mild sphere.
    Which near our planet smiling came;
Thus, Mary, be but thou my own;
    While brighter eyes unheeded play,
I'll love those moonlight looks alone,
    That bless my home and guide my way.

The day had sunk in dim showers,
    But midnight now, with lustre meet.
Illumined all the pale flowers,
    Like hope upon a mourner's cheek.
                I said (while
                The moon's smile
    Played o'er a stream, in d...

My love she wears a cotton plaid,
A bonnet of the straw;
Her cheeks are leaves of roses spread,
Her lips are like the haw.
In truth she is as sweet a maid
As true love ever saw.

Her curls are ever in my eyes,
As nets by Cupid flung;
Her voice will oft my sleep surprise,
More sweet then ballad sung.
O Mary Bateman's curling hair!
I wake, and there is nothing there.

I wake, and fall asleep again,
The same delights in visions rise;
There's nothing can appear more plain
Than those rose cheeks and those bright eyes.
I wake again, and all alone
Sits Darkness on his ebon throne.

All silent runs the silver Trent,
The cobweb veils are all wet through,
A silver bead's on every bent,
On every leaf a bleb of dew.
I sighed, t...

This love puts all humanity from me;
I can but maledict her, pray her dead,
For giving love and getting love of thee -
Feeding a heart that else mine own had fed!

How much I love I know not, life not known,
Save as some unit I would add love by;
But this I know, my being is but thine own
Fused from its separateness by ecstasy.

And thus I grasp thy amplitudes, of her
Ungrasped, though helped by nigh-regarding eyes;
Canst thou then hate me as an envier
Who see unrecked what I so dearly prize?
Believe me, Lost One, Love is lovelier
The more it shapes its moan in selfish-wise.

1866.

Love has crept out of her sealéd heart
    As a field-bee, black and amber,
    Breaks from the winter-cell, to clamber
Up the warm grass where the sunbeams start.

Mischief has come in her dawning eyes,
    And a glint of coloured iris brings
    Such as lies along the folded wings
Of the bee before he flies.

Who, with a ruffling, careful breath,
    Has opened the wings of the wild young sprite?
    Has fluttered her spirit to stumbling flight
In her eyes, as a young bee stumbleth?

Love makes the burden of her voice.
    The hum of his heavy, staggering wings
    Sets quivering with wisdom the common things
That she says, and her words rejoice.

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...

There is a quiet spirit in these woods,
That dwells where'er the gentle south-wind blows;
Where, underneath the white-thorn, in the glade,
The wild flowers bloom, or, kissing the soft air,
The leaves above their sunny palms outspread.
With what a tender and impassioned voice
It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought,
When the fast ushering star of morning comes
O'er-riding the gray hills with golden scarf;
Or when the cowled and dusky-sandaled Eve,
In mourning weeds, from out the western gate,
Departs with silent pace!    That spirit moves
In the green valley, where the silver brook,
From its full laver, pours the white cascade;
And, babbling low amid the tangled woods,
Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter.
And frequent, on the everla...

[Greek poem here--Euripides.]



Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
    And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene.
Where, the long drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
    Alternate come and go;

Or where the denser grove receives
    No sunlight from above,
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
    The shadows hardly move.

Beneath some patriarchal tree
    I lay upon the ground;
His hoary arms uplifted he,
And all the broad leaves over me
Clapped their little hands in glee,
    With one continuous sound;--

A slumberous sound, a sound that brings
    The feelings of a dream,
As of innumerable wings,
A...

1.

When I hear you express an affection so warm,
Ne'er think, my belov'd, that I do not believe,
For your lip, would the soul of suspicion disarm,
And your eye beams a ray, which can never deceive.

2.

Yet still, this fond bosom regrets whilst adoring,
That love like the leaf, must fall into the sear,
That age will come on, when remembrance deploring,
Contemplates the scenes of her youth, with a tear.

3.

That the time must arrive, when no longer retaining
Their auburn, these locks must wave thin to the breeze.
When a few silver hairs of those tresses remaining,
Prove nature a prey to decay, and disease.

4.

'Tis this, my belov'd, which spreads gloom o'er my features
Tho' I ne'er shall presume to arraign the decree;<...