Giunto m' ha Amor fra belle e crude braccia.

HE CANNOT END HER CRUELTY, NOR SHE HIS HOPE.


    Me Love has left in fair cold arms to lie,
Which kill me wrongfully: if I complain,
My martyrdom is doubled, worse my pain:
Better in silence love, and loving die!
For she the frozen Rhine with burning eye
Can melt at will, the hard rock break in twain,
So equal to her beauty her disdain
That others' pleasure wakes her angry sigh.
A breathing moving marble all the rest,
Of very adamant is made her heart,
So hard, to move it baffles all my art.
Despite her lowering brow and haughty breast,
One thing she cannot, my fond heart deter
From tender hopes and passionate sighs for her.

MACGREGOR.

Peoples of the world, together
Join to serve the common cause!
So it feeds us all for ever
See to it that it's now yours.

Forward, without forgetting
Where our strength can be seen now to be!
When starving or when eating
Forward, not forgetting
Our solidarity!

Black or white or brown or yellow
Leave your old disputes behind.
Once start talking with your fellow
Men, you'll soon be of one mind.

Forward, without forgetting
Where our strength can be seen now to be!
When starving or when eating
Forward, not forgetting
Our solidarity!

If we want to make this certain
We'll need you and your support.
It's yourselves you'll be deserting
if you rat your own sort.

Forward, without forgetting
Where our stren...

    Hypocrisy will serve as well
To propagate a church, as zeal;
As persecution and promotion
Do equally advance devotion:
So round white stones will serve, they say,
As well as eggs to make hens lay.

Ill-fated hour! oft as thy annual reign
Leads on th' autumnal tide, my pinion'd joys
Fade with the glories of the fading year;
"Remembrance wakes, with all her busy train,"
And bids affection heave the heart-drawn sigh
O'er the cold tomb, rich with the spoils of death,
And wet with many a tributary tear!

Eight times has each successive season sway'd
The fruitful sceptre of our milder clime
Since my loved----died! but why, ah! why
Should melancholy cloud my early years?
Religion spurns earth's visionary scene,
Philosophy revolts at misery's chain:
Just Heaven recall'd its own; the pilgrim call'd
From human woes: from sorrow's rankling worm--
Shall frailty then prevail?

Oh! be it mine
To curb the sigh which bursts o'er Heaven's decree;
To t...

    Bounce Buckram, velvet's dear;
    Christmas comes but once a year.

    No doubt to-morrow I will hide
    My face from you, my King.
    Let me rejoice this Sunday noon,
    And kneel while gray priests sing.

    It is not wisdom to forget.
    But since it is my fate
    Fill thou my soul with hidden wine
    To make this white hour great.

    My God, my God, this marvelous hour
    I am your son I know.
    Once in a thousand days your voice
    Has laid temptation low.

Lasso! quante fiate Amor m' assale.

WHEN LOVE DISTURBS HIM, HE CALMS HIMSELF BY THINKING OF THE EYES AND WORDS OF LAURA.


    Alas! how ceaselessly is urged Love's claim,
By day, by night, a thousand times I turn
Where best I may behold the dear lights burn
Which have immortalized my bosom's flame.
Thus grow I calm, and to such state am brought,
At noon, at break of day, at vesper-bell,
I find them in my mind so tranquil dwell,
I neither think nor care beside for aught.
The balmy air, which, from her angel mien,
Moves ever with her winning words and wise,
Makes wheresoe'er she breathes a sweet serene
As 'twere a gentle spirit from the skies,
Still in these scenes some comfort brings to me,
Nor elsewhere breathes my harass'd heart so free.

Who shall invoke her, who shall be her priest,
With single rites the common debt to pay?
On some green headland fronting to the East
Our fairest boy shall kneel at break of day.
Naked, uplifting in a laden tray
New milk and honey and sweet-tinctured wine,
Not without twigs of clustering apple-spray
To wreath a garland for Our Lady's shrine.
The morning planet poised above the sea
Shall drop sweet influence through her drowsing lid;
Dew-drenched, his delicate virginity
Shall scarce disturb the flowers he kneels amid,
That, waked so lightly, shall lift up their eyes,
Cushion his knees, and nod between his thighs.

O say, dear sister, are you coming
    Forth to the fields with me?
The very air is gaily ringing
    With hum of bird and bee,
And crowds of swallows now are chirping
    Up in our ancient thorn,
And earth and air are both rejoicing,
    On this gay summer morn.

Shall we hie unto the streamlet's side
    To seek our little boat,
And, plying our oars with right good will,
    Over its bright waves float?
Or shall we loll on the grassy bank
    For hours dreamy, still,
To draw from its depths some silv'ry prize,
    Reward of angler's skill?

I do not talk of the tempting game
    The forest covers hide,
So dear to the sportsman - plovers shy,
    Pheasants with eye of pride,
For I know your timid nature shrinks
    From flas...

All the night in woe
Lyca's parents go
Over valleys deep,
While the deserts weep.

Tired and woe-begone,
Hoarse with making moan,
Arm in arm, seven days
They traced the desert ways.

Seven nights they sleep
Among shadows deep,
And dream they see their child
Starved in desert wild.

Pale through pathless ways
The fancied image strays,
Famished, weeping, weak,
With hollow piteous shriek.

Rising from unrest,
The trembling woman pressed
With feet of weary woe;
She could no further go.

In his arms he bore
Her, armed with sorrow sore;
Till before their way
A couching lion lay.

Turning back was vain:
Soon his heavy mane
Bore them to the ground,
Then he stalked around,

S...

All are architects of Fate,
    Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
    Some with ornaments of rhyme.

Nothing useless is, or low;
    Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
    Strengthens and supports the rest.

For the structure that we raise,
    Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
    Are the blocks with which we build.

Truly shape and fashion these;
    Leave no yawning gaps between;
Think not, because no man sees,
    Such things will remain unseen.

In the elder days of Art,
    Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
    For the Gods see everywhere.

Let us do our work as well,
    Both the unseen and ...

"How disappeared he?" Ask the newt and toad;
Ask of his fellow-men, and they will tell
How he was found, cold as an icicle,
Under an arch of that forlorn abode;
Where he, unpropped, and by the gathering flood
Of years hemmed round, had dwelt, prepared to try
Privation's worst extremities, and die
With no one near save the omnipresent God.
Verily so to live was an awful choice
A choice that wears the aspect of a doom;
But in the mould of mercy all is cast
For Souls familiar with the eternal Voice;
And this forgotten Taper to the last
Drove from itself, we trust, all frightful gloom.

Draw closer to my side to-night,
Dear wife, give me thy hand,
My heart is sad with memories
Which thou canst understand,
Its twenty years this very day,
I know thou minds it well,
Since o'er our happy wedded life
The heaviest trouble fell.

We stood beside the little cot,
But not a word we said;
With breaking hearts we learned, alas,
Our little Claude was dead,
He was the last child born to us,
The loveliest, - the best,
I sometimes fear we loved him more
Than any of the rest.

We tried to say "Thy will be done,"
We strove to be resigned;
But all in vain, our loss had left
Too deep a wound behind.
I saw the tears roll down thy cheek,
And shared thy misery,
But could not speak a soothing word,
I could but grieve with...

Good morning, Life, and all
Things glad and beautiful.
My pockets nothing hold,
But he that owns the gold,
The Sun, is my great friend,
His spending has no end.

Hail to the morning sky,
Which bright clouds measure high;
Hail to you birds whose throats
Would number leaves by notes;
Hail to you shady bowers,
And you green fields of flowers.

Hail to you women fair,
That make a show so rare
In cloth as white as milk,
Be't calico or silk:
Good morning, Life, and all
Things glad and beautiful.

Rose-bosom'd and rose-limb'd
With eyes of dazzling bright
Shakes Venus mid the twinèd boughs of the night;
Rose-limb'd, soft-stepping
From low bough to bough
Shaking the wide-hung starry fruitage--dimmed
Its bloom of snow
By that sole planetary glow.

Venus, avers the astronomer,
Not thus idly dancing goes
Flushing the eternal orchard with wild rose.
She through ether burns
Outpacing planetary earth,
And ere two years triumphantly returns,
And again wave-like swelling flows,
And again her flashing apparition comes and goes.

This we have not seen,
No heavenly courses set,
No flight unpausing through a void serene:
But when eve clears,
Arises Venus as she first uprose
Stepping the shaken boughs among,
And in her bosom glo...

Air--Blind Mary.


I.

There flows from her spirit such love and delight,
That the face of Blind Mary is radiant with light--
As the gleam from a homestead through darkness will show
Or the moon glimmer soft through the fast falling snow.


II.

Yet there's a keen sorrow comes o'er her at times,
As an Indian might feel in our northerly climes!
And she talks of the sunset, like parting of friends,
And the starlight, as love, that not changes nor ends.


III.

Ah! grieve not, sweet maiden, for star or for sun,
For the mountains that tower or the rivers that run--
For beauty and grandeur, and glory, and light,
Are seen by the spirit, and not by the sight.


IV.

In vain for the thoughtless ar...

Christina Rossetti died December 29, 1894


The stars are strong in the deeps of the lustrous night,
Cold and splendid as death if his dawn be bright;
Cold as the cast-off garb that is cold as clay,
Splendid and strong as a spirit intense as light.
A soul more sweet than the morning of new-born May
Has passed with the year that has passed from the world away.
A song more sweet than the morning's first-born song
Again will hymn not among us a new year's day.
Not here, not here shall the carol of joy grown strong
Ring rapture now, and uplift us, a spell-struck throng,
From dream to vision of life that the soul may see
By death's grace only, if death do its trust no wrong.
Scarce yet the days and the starry nights are three
Since here among us a spirit abo...

Thank God, bless God, all ye who suffer not
More grief than ye can weep for. That is well
That is light grieving! lighter, none befell
Since Adam forfeited the primal lot.
Tears! what are tears? The babe weeps in its cot,
The mother singing, at her marriage-bell
The bride weeps, and before the oracle
Of high-faned hills the poet has forgot
Such moisture on his cheeks. Thank God for grace,
Ye who weep only! If, as some have done,
Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place
And touch but tombs, look up I those tears will run
Soon in long rivers down the lifted face,
And leave the vision clear for stars and sun