Phocian Xanthis, don’t be ashamed of love
for your serving-girl. Once before, Briseis
the Trojan slave with her snow-white skin stirred
angry Achilles:

and captive Tecmessa’s loveliness troubled
her master Ajax, the son of Telamon:
and Agamemnon, in his mid-triumph, burned
for a stolen girl,

while the barbarian armies, defeated
in Greek victory, and the loss of Hector,
handed Troy to the weary Thessalians,
an easier prey.

You don’t know your blond Phyllis hasn’t parents

O Venus, the queen of Cnidos and Paphos,
spurn your beloved Cyprus, and summoned
by copious incense, come to the lovely shrine
of my Glycera.

And let that passionate boy of yours, Cupid,
and the Graces with loosened zones, and the Nymphs,
and Youth, less lovely without you, hasten here,
and Mercury too.

Ah, my dear angry Lord,
Since thou dost love, yet strike;
Cast down, yet help afford;
Sure I will do the like.

I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve;
And all my sour-sweet days
I will lament and love.

(IRIS.)

DADDY dear, I'm only four
And I'd rather not be more:
Four's the nicest age to be--
Two and two, or one and three.

All I love is two and two,
Mother, Fabian, Paul and you;
All you love is one and three,
Mother, Fabian, Paul and me.

Give your little girl a kiss
Because she learned and told you this.

Bees say, winds say, birds say and all trees say
you were born on 8th May
in a joyous morning
when all nightingales were singing
with sweet melody to celebrate your sweet birth
on earth.

O my Love, my red Princess Rose,
since then, my day comes and day goes,
night comes and passes night,
I, in darkness or light,
adore you and take your sweet smell
and to the world your sovereignty I tell.

Birds sing "I love you, love" the whole day through,
And not another song can they sing right;
But, singing done with, loving's done with quite,
The autumn sunders every twittering two.
And I'd not have love make too much ado
With sweet parades of fondness and delight,
Lest iterant wont should make caresses trite,
Love-names mere cuckoo ousters of the true.

Oh heart can hear heart's sense in senseless nought,
And heart that's sure of heart has little speech.
What shall it tell? The other knows its thought.

When the wind blows her veil
And uncovers her laughter
I cease, I turn pale.
When the wind blows her veil
From the woes I bewail
Of love and hereafter:
When the wind blows her veil
I cease, I turn pale.

How often our beliefs more than our doubts
Ruin and mar us here, clog the soul's feet,
And shackle the heart's best impulses so,
That for Heaven's love we do inhuman things,
And with a (Unclear quietude
Hear babes moan in the everlasting fire!

Sometimes up out of this land
a legend begins to move.
Is it a coming near
of something under love?


Love is of the earth only,
the surface, a map of roads
leading wherever go miles
or little bushes nod.


Not so the legend under,
fixed, inexorable,
deep as the darkest mine
the thick rocks won't tell.


As fire burns the leaf
and out of the green appears
the vein in the center line
and the legend veins under there,


So, the world happens twice—
once what we see it as;

Love's aftermath! I think the time is now
That we must gather in, alone, apart
The saddest crop of all the crops that grow,
Love's aftermath.
Ah, sweet,--sweet yesterday, the tears that start
Can not put back the dial; this is, I trow,
Our harvesting! Thy kisses chill my heart,
Our lips are cold; averted eyes avow
The twilight of poor love: we can but part,
Dumbly and sadly, reaping as we sow,
Love's aftermath.