And some that listen to his lute's soft tone
Do love to deem the silver praise their own;
Some prize his blindfold sight; and there be they
Who kissed his wings which brought him yesterday,
And thank his wings to-day that they are flown.
My lady only loves the heart of Love;
Therefore Love's heart, my lady, hath for thee
His bower of unimagined flower and tree:
There kneels he now, and all an hungered of
Thine eyes grey-lit in shadowing air above,
Seals with thy mouth his immortality.
THE splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow; set the wild echoes flying;
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O hark! O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying;
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O Love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow; set the wild echoes flying; And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. Alfred Tennyson.
'Tis not the lily brow I prize,
Nor roseate cheeks nor sunny eyes,
Enough of lilies or of roses!
A thousand-fold more dear to me
The look that gentle love discloses,
That look which love alone can see.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
NOT violets I gave my love,
That in their life are sweet and rare,
And deep in colour, as the heart
Whose every thought of her is prayer;
For violets grow pale and dry,
And lose the semblance of her eye.
No lily's bud I gave my love,
Though she is white and pure as they;
For they are cold to smell and touch,
And blossom but a single day;
And pressed by love, in love's own page,
They yellow into early age.
But cyclamen I chose to give,
Whose pale white blossoms at the tips
(All else is driven snow) are pink,
And mind me of her perfect lips;
Still, till this flower is kept and old,
Its worth to love is yet untold.
Old, kept, and kissed, it does not lose
As other flowers the hues they wear;
Love is triumphant, and this bloom
Will never whiten from despair;
Rather it deepens as it lies,
This flower that purples when it dies.
So shall my love, as years roll by,
Take kingly colours from its own;
Sole master of her vanquished heart,
Am I not master of a throne?
Crushed by no foot, nor cast away,
My purple love shall rule the day.
C. C. Fraser Tytler.
Aн, how sweet it is to love.
Ah, how gay is young desire!
And what pleasing pains we prove
When we first approach love's fire!
Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are.
Sighs which are from lovers blown
Do but gently heave the heart:
E'en the tears they shed alone
Cure, like trickling balm, their smart.
Lovers, when they lose their breath,
Bleed away in easy death.
Love and Time with reverence use;
Treat them like a parting friend :
Nor the golden gifts refuse
Which in youth sincere they send;
For each year their price is more,
And they less simple than before.
Love, like spring-tides full and high,
Swells in every youthful vein ;
But each tide does less supply,
Till they quite shrink in again :
If a flow in age appear,
'T is but rain, and runs not clear.
OH, how hard it is to find
The one just suited to our mind;
And if that one should be
False, unkind, or found too late,
What can we do but sigh at fate,
And sing Woe's me-woe's me!
Love's a boundless, burning waste,
Where bliss's stream we seldom taste,
And still more seldom flee
Suspense's thorns, suspicion's stings;
Yet somehow Love a something brings
That's sweet-e'en when we sigh, "Woe's me!"
THE great sun, benighted,
May faint in the sky;
But love, once uplighted,
Will never more die.
Form, with its brightness,
From eyes will depart;
It walketh, in whiteness,
The halls of the heart.
PACK, clouds, away, and welcome day,
With night we banish sorrow;
Sweet air blow soft, mount larks aloft
To give my Love good-morrow!
Wings from the wind to please her mind,
Notes from the lark I'll borrow;
Bird prune thy wing, nightingale sing.
To give my Love good-morrow;
To give my Love good-morrow,
Notes from them both I'll borrow.
Wake from thy nest, Robin-red-breast,
Sing birds in every furrow;
And from each hill, let music shrill
Give my fair Love good-morrow!
Blackbird and thrush in every bush,
Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow !
You pretty elves, amongst yourselves,
Sing my fair Love good-morrow;
To give my Love good-morrow,
Sing birds in every furrow!
Thomas Heywood.
|
