Most men know love but as a part of life;
They hide it in some corner of the breast,
Even from themselves; and only when they rest
In the brief pauses of that daily strife,
Wherewith the world might else be not so rife,
They draw it forth (as one draws forth a toy
To soothe some ardent, kiss-exacting boy)
And hold it up to sister, child, or wife.
Ah me! why may not love and life be one?
Why walk we thus alone, when by our side,
Love, like a visible God, might be our guide?
How would the marts grow noble! and the street,

ALL beautiful things bring sadness, nor alone
Music, whereof that wisest poet spake;
Because in us keen longings they awake
After the good for which we pine and groan,
From which exil’d we make continual moan,
Till once again we may our spirits slake
At those clear streams, which man did first forsake,
When he would dig for fountains of his own.
All beauty makes us sad, yet not in vain:
For who would be ungracious to refuse,
Or not to use, this sadness without pain,
Whether it flows upon us from the hues

Go Valentine and tell that lovely maid
Whom Fancy still will pourtray to my sight,
How her Bard lingers in this sullen shade,
This dreary gloom of dull monastic night.
Say that from every joy of life remote
At evening's closing hour he quits the throng,
Listening alone the ring-dove's plaintive note
Who pours like him her solitary song.
Say that her absence calls the sorrowing sigh,
Say that of all her charms he loves to speak,
In fancy feels the magic of her eye,
In fancy views the smile illume her cheek,

Women have loved before as I love now;
At least, in lively chronicles of the past—
Of Irish waters by a Cornish prow
Or Trojan waters by a Spartan mast
Much to their cost invaded—here and there,
Hunting the amorous line, skimming the rest,
I find some woman bearing as I bear
Love like a burning city in the breast.
I think however that of all alive
I only in such utter, ancient way
Do suffer love; in me alone survive
The unregenerate passions of a day
When treacherous queens, with death upon the tread,

How fondly I gaze on the fast falling-leaves,
That mark, as I wander, the summer's decline;
And then I exclaim, while my conscious heart heaves,
"Thus early to droop and to perish be mine!"

Yet once I remember, in moments long past,
Most dear to my sight was the spring's opening bloom;
But then my youth's spring sorrow had not o'ercast,
Nor taught me with fondness to look on the tomb.

Fair Spring! now no longer these grief-faded eyes
Thy rich glowing beauties with pleasure can see;
Thy pale sickly hues, chilly Autumn, I prize,

Songs of praise the angels sang,
Heav’n with alleluias rang,
When creation was begun,
When God spoke and it was done.

Songs of praise awoke the morn
When the Prince of Peace was born;
Songs of praise arose when He
Captive led Captivity.

Heav’n and earth must pass away!
Songs of praise shall crown that day!
God will make new heav’ns and earth;
Songs of praise shall hail their birth.

And can man alone be dumb,
Till that glorious kingdom come?
No: the church delights to raise
Psalms, and hymns, and songs of praise.

Dawn coming in over the fields
of darkness takes me by surprise
and I look up from my solitary road
pleased not to be alone, the birds
now choiring from the orange groves
huddling to the low hills. But sorry
that this night has ended, a night
in which you spoke of how little love
we seemed to have known and all of it
going from one of us to the other.
You could tell the words took me
by surprise, as they often will, and you
grew shy and held me away for a while,
your eyes enormous in the darkness,

'Tis not the beam of her bright blue eye,
Nor the smile of her lip of rosy dye,
Nor the dark brown wreaths of her glossy hair,
Nor her changing cheek, so rich and rare.
Oh! these are the sweets of a fairy dream,
The changing hues of an April sky.
They fade like dew in the morning beam,
Or the passing zephyr's odour'd sigh.

'Tis a dearer spell that bids me kneel,
'Tis the heart to love, and the soul to feel:
'Tis the mind of light, and the spirit free,
And the bosom that heaves alone for me.

Oh! go to sleep, my baby dear,
And I will hold thee on my knee;
Thy mother's in her winding sheet,
And thou art all that's left to me.
My hairs are white with grief and age,
I've borne the weight of every ill,
And I would lay me with my child,
But thou art left to love me still.

Should thy false father see thy face,
The tears would fill his cruel e'e,
But he has scorned thy mother's woe,
And he shall never look on thee:
But I will rear thee up alone,
And with me thou shalt aye remain;

Oh the tear is in my eye, and my heart it is breaking,
Thou hast fled from me, Connor, and left me forsaken;
Bright and warm was our morning, but soon has it faded,
For I gave thee a true heart, and thou hast betrayed it.

Thy footsteps I followed in darkness and danger,
From the home of my love to the land of the stranger;
Thou wert mine through the tempest, the blight, and the burning;
Could I think thou wouldst change when the morn was returning.

Yet peace to thy heart, though from mine it must sever,