When Cupid read this title, straight he said,
'Wars, I perceive, against me will be made.'
But spare, oh Love! to tax thy poet so,
Who oft bath borne thy ensign 'gainst thy foe;
I am not he by whom thy mother bled,
When she to heaven on Mars his horses fled.
I oft, like other youths, thy flame did prove,
And if thou ask, what I do still? I love.
Nay, I have taught by art to keep Love's course,
And made that reason which before was force.
I seek not to betray thee, pretty boy,
Nor what I once have written to destroy.

Who knows the deeps, where the water sleeps
Leagues from the light away?
Who knows the heights, where myriad lights
Fill heaven with endless day?

The earth goes on—seeks and loses the sun,
And men in the changes delight;
Love whirls us away into changeless day,
Or whelms us in changeless night.

High, hollowed in green
above the rocks of reason
lies the crater lake
whose ice the dreamer breaks
to find a summer season.

'He will plunge like a plummet down
far into hungry tides'
they cry, but as the sea
climbs to a lunar magnet
so the dreamer pursues
the lake where love resides.

Great Kings were dust and all their deeds forgot
Did my harp's taut and burnished strings stand mute;
The fragrance of dead ladies' lovely names
Blew never down but for my lute.

Can I find True-Love a gift
In this dark hour to restore her,
When body's vessel breaks adrift,
When hope and beauty fade before her?
But in this plight I cannot think
Of song or music, that would grieve her,
Or toys or meat or snow-cooled drink;
Not this way can her sadness leave her.
She lies and frets in childish fever,
All I can do is but to cry
'Sleep, sleep, True-Love and lullaby!'

Lullaby, and sleep again.
Two bright eyes through the window stare,
A nose is flattened on the pane
And infant fingers fumble there.

JUST a whisper, half-heard,
But our heart knows the word;
Caresses that seem
Like love's lips in a dream;
Yet we know she is here,
The desirèd, the dear,
The love of the year!
In the murmur of boughs,
In the softening of skies,
In the sun on the house,
In the daffodil's green
(Half an inch, half-unseen
Mid the mournful brown mould
Where the rotten leaf lies)
Her story is told.


O Spring, darling Spring,
O sweet days of blue weather
The thrushes shall sing,
Fields shall grow green again,

Take heed of loving me,
At least remember, I forbade it thee;
Not that I shall repair my unthrifty waste
Of breath and blood, upon thy sighs, and tears,
By being to thee then what to me thou wast;
But, so great joy, our life at once outwears,
Then, lest thy love, by my death, frustrate be,
If thou love me, take heed of loving me.

Take heed of hating me,
Or too much triumph in the victory.
Not that I shall be mine own officer,
And hate with hate again retaliate;
But thou wilt lose the style of conqueror,

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns

Ask me no more: the moon may draw the sea;
The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shape,
With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape;
But O too fond, when have I answer'd thee?
Ask me no more.
Ask me no more: what answer should I give?
I love not hollow cheek or faded eye:
Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die!
Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live;
Ask me no more.

Ask me no more: thy fate and mine are seal'd:

And in Life's noisiest hour,
There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy.


You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within ;
And to the leading Love-throb in the Heart
Thro' all my Being, thro' my pulses beat ;
You lie in all my many Thoughts, like Light,
Like the fair light of Dawn, or summer Eve
On rippling Stream, or cloud-reflecting Lake.
And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you,
How oft ! I bless the Lot, that made me love you.