Mye love toke skorne my servise to retaine
Wherein me thought she usid crueltie:
Sins with good will I lost my libretye
To followe her wiche causith all my payne.
Might never care cause me for to refrayne
But onlye this wiche is extremytie,
Gyving me nought, alas, not to agree
That as I was her man, I might remayne.
But sins that thus ye list to ordre me
That wolde have bene your servaunte true and faste,
Displese the not, my doting dayes bee paste,
And with my losse to leve I must agre;
For as there is a certeyne tyme to rage,

Ah ! could I but forget
Her beauty, her sweet tone
And talking, and that lovely look at one,
My martyrdom, I think, were ended yet.

But ah! I cannot tear myself apart:
And great simplicity
Is hope in me;
Only such thrall
Gives one the heart
To go through all

And how could I forget
Her beauty, her sweet tone
And talking, and that lovely look at one?
My martyrdom 's too sweet.

Some love endures a season;
It blossoms as the rose:
It blooms without a reason,
Without a thought it goes.
It comes through dreamland's portal;
It flashes on our eyes;
It makes some song immortal,
Then in an hour it dies.

Such love, though brief and hollow,
Wins worship as of old:
A thousand lovers follow
The form they may not hold.
“The fairest love is fleetest
And soonest lost in gloom;
Love's dawn,” they say, “is sweetest
When sunset brings its doom.”

If pleasure's white hand beckons,
What eager hearts pursue!

First in fair youth I sang the love of earth:
The flowers of youth before me bright as fire
Flickered,—I cherished many a winged desire;
To eager thoughts the laughing days gave birth.
Love had not known chill sorrow, nor the dearth
Of strength:—he rested on a bed of flowers:
Sweet joy was his, and tuneable soft hours,—
Pleasure, and mutual toil; and silvery mirth.

But Love was stricken. Then the earth became
No more a bower of roses, but of snow,—
One vast deep charnel-house, one waste of woe,
Lighted at times by lurid leaping flame.

Did love sojourn with you long,
Many days or few?
It was one with Time itself,
That was all I knew.

Was it sacred or profane,
Was it false or true?
It was bitter at the core,
That was all I knew.

I thought I loved,—no form of earth,
A soul, a visioned shape of air,
The teeming heart and fancy's birth,
The image of all good and fair;
It had a life, a place, a home,
Had smile and glance and voice and tone;
Like green fields in the ocean's foam,
'T was with me still when all alone.

There was a Heaven upon its brow,
An Eden in its happy eye;
It charmed,—the sage may tell me how;
It still has lived, it will not die,—
In pain and pleasure, weal and woe,
Has always been my heart's fond goal,
The centre where my feelings flow,

That light blood-loving weasel, a tongue of yellow
Fire licking the sides of the gray stones,
Has a more passionate and more pure heart
In the snake-slender flanks than man can imagine;
But he is betrayed by his own courage,
The man who kills him is like a cloud hiding a star.

Then praise the jewel-eyed hawk and the tall blue heron;
The black cormorants that fatten their sea-rock
With shining slime; even that ruiner of anthills
The red shafted woodpecker flying,
A white star between blood-color wing-clouds,

Perhaps it is not love, said I,
That melts my soul when Flavia's nigh;
Where wit and sense like hers agree,
One may be pleased, and yet be free.

The beauties of her polish'd mind
It needs no lover's eye to find;
The hermit freezing in his cell
Might wish the gentle Flavia well.

It is not love—averse to bear
The servile chain that lovers wear;
Let, let me all my fears remove,
My doubts dispel—it is not love.

Oh! when did wit so brightly shine
In any form less fair than thine?
It is—it is love's subtle fire,

The burning fire shakes in the night,
On high her silver candles gleam,
With far-flung arms enflamed with light,
The trees are lost in dream.

Come in thy beauty! 'tis my love,
Lost in far-wandering desire,
Hath in the darkling deep above
Set stars and kindled fire.

B ELOVÈD , from the hour that you were born
I loved you with the love whose birth is pain;
And now, that I have lost you, I must mourn
With mortal anguish, born of love again;
And so I know that Love and Pain are one,
Yet not one single joy would I forego.—
The very radiance of the tropic sun
Makes the dark night but darker here below.
Mine is no coward soul to count the cost;
The coin of love with lavish hand I spend,
And though the sunlight of my life is lost
And I must walk in shadow to the end,—
I gladly press the cross against my heart,