This, then, is she,
        My mother as she looked at seventeen,
        When she first met my father. Young incredibly,
        Younger than spring, without the faintest trace
        Of disappointment, weariness, or tean
        Upon the childlike earnestness and grace
        Of the waiting face.
        These close-wound ropes of pearl
        (Or common beads made precious by their use)
        Seem heavy for so slight a throat to wear;
        But the low bodice leaves the shoulders bare
        And half the glad swell of the breast, for news
        That now the woman stirs within the girl.
        And yet,
        Even so, the loops and globes
        Of beaten gold
        And jet
        Hung, in the stately way of old,
        Fro...

Are you sleeping? have you forgotten? do not sleep, my sister dear!
How can you sleep? the morning brings the day I hate and fear;
The cock has crow’d already once, he crows before his time;
Awake! the creeping glimmer steals, the hills are white with rime.

II.
Ah, clasp me in your arms, sister, ah, fold me to your breast!
Ah, let me weep my fill once more, and cry myself to rest!
To rest? to rest and wake no more were better rest for me,
Than to waken every morning to that face I loathe to see:

III.
I envied your sweet slumber, all night so calm you lay,
The night was calm, the morn is calm, and like another day;
But I could wish yon moaning sea would rise and burst the shore,
And such a whirlwind blow these woods, as never blew before.

IV.
For, ...

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."


I gave myself to Jesus
    In my sunny childhood's years,
When on my young, unsullied cheek
    There lay no trace of tears;
I little knew what gift I gave,
    Nor yet what gift I took;
For life without and life within
    Were each a sealed-up book.

But soon enough unfolding years
    Brought sorrow, toil, and pain, -
Brought disappointment's burning tears,
    And yearnings wild and vain;
And then I learned what precious Gift
    In Jesus I received
In that still hour of childish trust,
    When my young heart believed.

'Twas then I knew what arm unseen
    Was round me 'mid the strife,
The blighted hope, the toil uncheered,
 ...

I
Who may praise her?
Eyes where midnight shames the sun,
Hair of night and sunshine spun,
Woven of dawn's or twilight's loom,
Radiant darkness, lustrous gloom,
Godlike childhood's flowerlike bloom,
None may praise aright, nor sing
Half the grace wherewith like spring
Love arrays her.

II
Love untold
Sings in silence, speaks in light
Shed from each fair feature, bright
Still from heaven, whence toward us, now
Nine years since, she deigned to bow
Down the brightness of her brow,
Deigned to pass through mortal birth:
Reverence calls her, here on earth,
Nine years old.

III
Love's deep duty,
Even when love transfigured grows
Worship, all too surely knows
How, though love may cast out fear,
Yet the debt divine...

1.

Why should my anxious breast repine,
Because my youth is fled?
Days of delight may still be mine;
Affection is not dead.
In tracing back the years of youth,
One firm record, one lasting truth
Celestial consolation brings;
Bear it, ye breezes, to the seat,
Where first my heart responsive beat, -
"Friendship is Love without his wings!"


2

Through few, but deeply chequer'd years,
What moments have been mine!
Now half obscured by clouds of tears,
Now bright in rays divine;
Howe'er my future doom be cast,
My soul, enraptured with the past,
To one idea fondly clings;
Friendship! that thought is all thine own,
Worth worlds of bliss, that thought alone -
"Friendship is Love without his wings!"


3
...

    O far is fled the winter wind,
    And far is fled the frost and snow,
    But the cold scorn on my love's brow
    Hath never yet prepared to go.

    More lasting than ten winters' wind,
    More cutting than ten weeks of frost,
    Is the chill frowning of thy mind,
    Where my poor heart was pledged and lost.

    I see thee taunting down the street,
    And by the frowning that I see
    I might have known it long ere now,
    Thy love was never meant for me.

    And had I known ere I began
    That love had been so hard to win,
    I would have filled my heart with pride,
    Nor left one hope to let love in.

    I would have wrapped it in my breast,
    And pinned it with a silver pin,
    Safe as a bird within its n...

I.

Oh, what a dawn of day!
How the March sun feels like May!
All is blue again
After last night’s rain,
And the South dries the hawthorn-spray.
Only, my Love’s away!
I’d as lief that the blue were grey,

II.

Runnels, which rillets swell,
Must be dancing down the dell,
With a foaming head
On the beryl bed
Paven smooth as a hermit’s cell;
Each with a tale to tell,
Could my Love but attend as well.

III.

Dearest, three months ago!
When we lived blocked-up with snow,
When the wind would edge
In and in his wedge,
In, as far as the point could go,
Not to our ingle, though,
Where we loved each the other so!

IV.

Laughs with so little cause!
We devised games out of straws.
We...

I sit in the cloud and the darkness
Where I lost you, peerless one;
Your bright face shines upon fairer lands,
Like the dawning of the sun,
And what to you is the rustic youth,
You sometimes smiled upon.

You have roamed through mighty cities,
By the Orient's gleaming sea,
Down the glittering streets of Venice,
And soft-skied Araby:
Life to you has been an anthem,
But a solemn dirge to me.

For everywhere, by Rome's bright hills,
Or by the silvery Rhine,
You win all hearts to you, where'er
Your glancing tresses shine;
But, darling, the love of the many,
Is not a love like mine.

Last night I heard your voice in my dreams,
I woke with a joyous thrill
To hear but the half-awakened birds,
For the dark dawn lingered still,

'Tis love that blinds my heart and eyes, -
    I sometimes say in doubting dreams, -
    The face that near me perfect seems
Cold Memory paints in fainter dyes.

'Twas but love's dazzled eyes - I say -
    That made her seem so strangely bright;
    The face I worshipped yesternight,
I dread to meet it changed to-day.

As, when dies out some song's refrain,
    And leaves your eyes in happy tears,
    Awake the same fond idle fears, -
It cannot sound so sweet again.

You wait and say with vague annoy,
    "It will not sound so sweet again,"
    Until comes back the wild refrain
That floods your soul with treble joy.

So when I see my love again
    Fades the unquiet doubt away,
    While shines her beauty like the day
Over my...

Whose Timidity frequently agitated her, when pressed to gratify her Friends by her Musical Talents.


'Tis said (and I believe it too)
That genuine merit seeks the shade;
Blushing to think what is her due,
As of her own sweet pow'rs afraid: -

Thus, lovely maid! on fluttering wings,
Thy pow'rs a thousand fears pursue,
Which, like thy own harmonious strings,
When press'd enchant, and tremble too!

The pity, which we give, you owe,
For mutual fears on both attend;
While anxious thus you joy bestow,
We fear too soon that joy will end!

    "Unriddle this riddle, my own Jenny love,
    Unriddle this riddle for me,
    And if ye unriddle the riddle aright,
    A kiss your prize shall be,
    And if ye riddle the riddle all wrong,
    Ye're treble the debt to me:

    I'll give thee an apple without any core;
    I'll give thee a cherry where stones never be;
    I'll give thee a palace, without any door,
    And thou shalt unlock it without any key;
    I'll give thee a fortune that kings cannot give,
    Nor any one take from thee."

    "How can there be apples without any core?
    How can there be cherries where stones never be?
    How can there be houses without any door?
    Or doors I may open without any key?
    How can'st thou give fortunes that kings cannot give,
   ...

    What state of life can be so blest
    As love, that warms a lover's breast?
    Two souls in one, the same desire
    To grant the bliss, and to require!
    But if in heaven a hell we find,
    'Tis all from thee,
    O Jealousy!
    'Tis all from thee,
    O Jealousy!
    Thou tyrant, tyrant Jealousy,
    Thou tyrant of the mind!
    All other ills, though sharp they prove,
    Serve to refine, and perfect love:
    In absence, or unkind disdain,
    Sweet hope relieves the lover's pain.
    But, ah! no cure but death we find,
    To set us free
    From Jealousy:
    O Jealousy!
    Thou tyrant, tyrant Jealousy,
    Thou tyrant of the mind!

    False in thy glass all objects are,
    Some set too near, and some too f...

("Dérision! que cet amour boiteux.")

[HERNANI, Act III.]


O mockery! that this halting love
That fills the heart so full of flame and transport,
Forgets the body while it fires the soul!
If but a youthful shepherd cross my path,
He singing on the way - I sadly musing,
He in his fields, I in my darksome alleys -
Then my heart murmurs: "O, ye mouldering towers!
Thou olden ducal dungeon! O how gladly
Would I exchange ye, and my fields and forests,
Mine ancient name, mine ancient rank, my ruins -
My ancestors, with whom I soon shall lie,
For his thatched cottage and his youthful brow!"
His hair is black - his eyes shine forth like thine.
Him thou might'st look upon, and say, fair youth,
Then turn to me, and think that I am old...

I.
Lord of light, whose shine no hands destroy,
God of song, whose hymn no tongue refuses,
Now, though spring far hence be cold and coy,
Bid the golden mouths of all the Muses
Ring forth gold of strains without alloy,
Till the ninefold rapture that suffuses
Heaven with song bid earth exult for joy,
Since the child whose head this dawn bedews is
Sweet as once thy violet-cradled boy.

II.
Even as he lay lapped about with flowers,
Lies the life now nine years old before us
Lapped about with love in all its hours;
Hailed of many loves that chant in chorus
Loud or low from lush or leafless bowers,
Some from hearts exultant born sonorous,
Some scarce louder-voiced than soft-tongued showers
Two months hence, when spring’s light wings poised o’er us

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...

    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.

I.

    Thine am I, my faithful fair,
        Thine, my lovely Nancy;
    Ev'ry pulse along my veins,
        Ev'ry roving fancy.

II.

    To thy bosom lay my heart,
        There to throb and languish:
    Tho' despair had wrung its core,
        That would heal its anguish.

III.

    Take away those rosy lips,
        Rich with balmy treasure:
    Turn away thine eyes of love,
        Lest I die with pleasure.

IV.

    What is life when wanting love?
        Night without a morning:
    Love's the cloudless summer sun,
        Nature gay adorning.

A life was mine full of the close concern
Of many-voiced affairs. The world sped fast;
Behind me, ever rolled a pregnant past.
A present came equipped with lore to learn.
Art, science, letters, in their turn,
Each one allured me with its treasures vast;
And I staked all for wisdom, till at last
Thou cam'st and taught my soul anew to yearn.
I had not dreamed that I could turn away
From all that men with brush and pen had wrought;
But ever since that memorable day
When to my heart the truth of love was brought,
I have been wholly yielded to its sway,
And had no room for any other thought.