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To Love, the soft and blooming child,
I touch the harp in descant wild;
To Love, the babe of Cyprian bowers,
The boy, who breathes and blushes flowers;
To Love, for heaven and earth adore him,
And gods and mortals bow before him!

("Puisque j'ai mis ma lèvre à ta coupe.")

[XXV., Jan. 1, 1835.]


Since I have set my lips to your full cup, my sweet,
Since I my pallid face between your hands have laid,
Since I have known your soul, and all the bloom of it,
And all the perfume rare, now buried in the shade;

Since it was given to me to hear one happy while,
The words wherein your heart spoke all its mysteries,
Since I have seen you weep, and since I have seen you smile,
Your lips upon my lips, and your gaze upon my eyes;

Since I have known upon my forehead glance and gleam,
A ray, a single ray, of your star, veiled always,
Since I have felt the fall upon my lifetime's stream,
Of one rose-petal plucked from the roses of your days;

I now am bold to say to the swi...

On seeing her December 25th, 1904, after two years' travel.


Take, fair maid, these simple lines
    From my pen;
Think of strollings 'neath the pines,
    Which have been -
Long and lonesome were the days
    We were apart,
But may Love, now, have her sways, -
    Bind heart to heart!
O'er main to isle and back to land
    Have I been;
Beheld on either hand
    A maiden queen:
But none with captivating charms
    Like thine;
None to nestle in her arms,
    Love of mine!
Charms unto thee God gave
    To banish strife;
To glorify and save
    One sweet life -
Take this, dear, before we part
    From this bliss;
'Tis but love flowing from my heart,
    Thine to kiss!

Who is that goddess to whom men should pray
But her from whom their hearts have turned away,
Out of whose virgin being they were born,
Whose mother nature they have named in scorn
Calling its holy substance common clay.

Yet from this so despised earth was made
The milky whiteness of those queens who swayed
Their generations with a light caress,
And from some image of whose loveliness
The heart built up high heaven when it prayed.

Lover, your heart, the heart on which it lies,
Your eyes that gaze, and those alluring eyes,
Your lips, the lips they kiss, alike had birth
Within this dark divinity of earth,
Within this mother being you despise.

Ah, when I think this earth on which we tread
Hath borne these blossoms of the lovely dead,
And mad...

        I.

Hotly burns the amaryllis
With its stars of red;
Whitely rise the stately lilies
From the lily bed;
Withered shrinks the wax May-apple
'Neath its parasol;
Chilly dies the violet dapple
In its earthly hall.


        II.

March is but a blust'ring liar,
April a sad love,
May a milkmaid from the byre
Flirting in the grove.
June is rich in many blossoms,
She's the one I'll woo;
Health swells in her sunny bosoms,
She's my sweetheart true.

Love thee, dearest? love thee?
    Yes, by yonder star I swear,
Which thro' tears above thee
    Shines so sadly fair;
Tho' often dim,
With tears, like him,
Like him my truth will shine,
    And--love thee, dearest? love thee?
Yes, till death I'm thine.

Leave thee, dearest? leave thee?
    No, that star is not more true;
When my vows deceive thee,
    He will wander too.
A cloud of night
May veil his light,
And death shall darken mine--
    But--leave thee, dearest? leave thee?
No, till death I'm thine.

Calm be thy sleep as infant's slumbers!
    Pure as angel thoughts thy dreams!
May every joy this bright world numbers
    Shed o'er thee their mingled beams!
Or if, where Pleasure's wing hath glided,
    There ever must some pang remain,
Still be thy lot with me divided,--
    Thine all the bliss and mine the pain!

Day and night my thoughts shall hover
    Round thy steps where'er they stray;
As, even when clouds his idol cover,
    Fondly the Persian tracks its ray.
If this be wrong, if Heaven offended
    By worship to its creature be,
Then let my vows to both be blended,
    Half breathed to Heaven and half to thee.

O realm of azure! O realm of light and colour, of youth and happiness! I have beheld thee in dream. We were together, a few, in a beautiful little boat, gaily decked out. Like a swan's breast the white sail swelled below the streamers frolicking in the wind.

I knew not who were with me; but in all my soul I felt that they were young, light-hearted, happy as I!

But I looked not indeed on them. I beheld all round the boundless blue of the sea, dimpled with scales of gold, and overhead the same boundless sea of blue, and in it, triumphant and mirthful, it seemed, moved the sun.

And among us, ever and anon, rose laughter, ringing and gleeful as the laughter of the gods!

And on a sudden, from one man's lips or another's, would flow words, songs of divine beauty and inspiration, and power ... it seeme...

As slow our ship her foamy track
    Against the wind was cleaving,
Her trembling pennant still looked back
    To that dear isle 'twas leaving.
So loathe we part from all we love.
    From all the links that bind us;
So turn our hearts as on we rove,
    To those we've left behind us.

When, round the bowl, of vanished years
    We talk, with joyous seeming,--
With smiles that might as well be tears,
    So faint, so sad their beaming;
While memory brings us back again
    Each early tie that twined us,
Oh, sweet's the cup that circles then
    To those we've left behind us.

And when, in other climes, we meet
    Some isle, or vale enchanting,
Where all looks flowery, wild, and sweet,
    And naught but love is wanting;
We think...

I.

A Baby's feet, like sea-shells pink,
Might tempt, should heaven see meet,
An angel's lips to kiss, we think,
A baby's feet.

Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat
They stretch and spread and wink
Their ten soft buds that part and meet.

No flower-bells that expand and shrink
Gleam half so heavenly sweet
As shine on life's untrodden brink
A baby's feet.

II.

A baby's hands, like rosebuds furled
Whence yet no leaf expands,
Ope if you touch, though close upcurled,
A baby's hands.

Then, fast as warriors grip their brands
When battle's bolt is hurled,
They close, clenched hard like tightening bands.

No rosebuds yet by dawn impearled
Match, even in loveliest lands,
The sweetest flowers in a...

Within us all a universe doth dwell;
And hence each people's usage laudable,
That ev'ry one the Best that meets his eyes
As God, yea e'en his God, doth recognise;
To Him both earth and heaven surrenders he,
Fears Him, and loves Him too, if that may be.

Your head, your gesture, your air,
are lovely, like a lovely landscape:
laughter’s alive, in your face,
a fresh breeze in a clear atmosphere.

The dour passer-by you brush past there,
is dazzled by health in flight,
flashing like a brilliant light
from your arms and shoulders.

The resounding colours
with which you sprinkle your dress,
inspire the spirits of poets
with thoughts of dancing flowers.

Those wild clothes are the emblem
of your brightly-hued mind:
madcap by whom I’m terrified,
I hate you, and love you, the same!

Sometimes in a lovely garden
where I trailed my listlessness,
I’ve felt the sunlight sear my breast
like some ironic weapon:

and Spring’s green presence
brought such humiliation
I’ve ...

Two savings of the Holy Scriptures beat
Like pulses in the Church's brow and breast;
And by them we find rest in our unrest
And, heart deep in salt-tears, do yet entreat
God's fellowship as if on heavenly seat.
The first is Jesus wept, whereon is prest
Full many a sobbing face that drops its best
And sweetest waters on the record sweet:
And one is where the Christ, denied and scorned
Looked upon Peter. Oh, to render plain
By help of having loved a little and mourned,
That look of sovran love and sovran pain
Which He, who could not sin yet suffered, turned
On him who could reject but not sustain!