In the time of early love,
Hill & field with promise blush'd:
Ours flew like a milky Dove,
And the night was Angel-hush'd.
Heaven open'd east & west,
Purer feet sped on the green.
Higher creature Earth possess'd:
I have known the bliss of Eden,
I on Eden's heart have been,
In the hour of Love's awaking,
In the time of early love.

Come to me, dearest, I'm lonely without thee;
Daytime and night-time, I'm thinking about thee;
Night-time and daytime, in dreams I behold thee;
Unwelcome the waking which ceases to fold thee.
Come to me, darling, my sorrows to lighten,
Come in thy beauty to bless and to brighten;
Come in thy womanhood, meekly and lowly,
Come in thy lovingness, queenly and holy.

Swallows will flit round the desolate ruin,
Telling of spring and its joyous renewing;
And thoughts of thy love and its manifold treasure,
Are circling my heart with a promise of pleasure.

Why should I hold back, dear body?
I hear many voices, dear body, mingling voices of lust,
And they do not tell the truth about you:
Let me speak out, let me tell the truth, I will not make more seem less:
Let me tell what I see but let me avoid the tangled phrases of the scholars,
Let me tell what I see in the virile direct syllables of love:
The truth about you, dear body, so long misunderstood:
The truth about you, dear body, so long suborned to base uses:
The truth about you, dear body, made the plaything of law and license:

What man dare say that he is quite immune
From charms and spells that ev'ry girl possesses?
A budding love is like the warmth of June,
That lulls and dulls his senses ere he guesses;
Yet who should seek to fly from such attack?
Though stricken sore, I hold my charmer blameless;
My truant heart I would not summon back,
I leave it in the care of one who's nameless.

He jests at scars who never felt the blow
That comes when love first smites and sends him reeling;
The stinging arrow speeds and brings him low,

When Charles was deceived by the maid he loved,
We saw no cloud his brow o'ercasting,
But proudly he smiled as if gay and unmoved,
Tho' the wound in his heart was deep and lasting.
And oft at night when the tempest rolled
He sung as he paced the dark deck over—
“Blow, wind, blow! thou art not so cold
As the heart of a maid that deceives her lover.”

Yet he lived with the happy and seemed to be gay,
Tho' the wound but sunk more deep for concealing;
And Fortune threw many a thorn in his way,
Which, true to one anguish, he trod without feeling!

Dear aunt, in the olden time of love,
When women like slaves were spurned,
A maid gave her heart, as she would her glove,
To be teased by a fop, and returned!
But women grow wiser as men improve,
And, tho' beaux, like monkeys, amuse us,
Oh! think not we 'd give such a delicate gem
As the heart to be played with or sullied by them;
No, dearest aunt, excuse us.

We may know by the head on Cupid's seal
What impression the heart will take;
If shallow the head, oh! soon we feel
What a poor impression 't will make!

Young Love lived once in a humble shed,
Where roses breathing
And woodbines wreathing
Around the lattice their tendrils spread,
As wild and sweet as the life he led.
His garden flourisht,
For young Hope nourisht.
The infant buds with beams and showers;
But lips, tho' blooming, must still be fed,
And not even Love can live on flowers.

Alas! that Poverty's evil eye
Should e'er come hither,
Such sweets to wither!
The flowers laid down their heads to die,
And Hope fell sick as the witch drew nigh.
She came one morning,

This is a haunted world. It hath no breeze
But is the echo of some voice beloved:
Its pines have human tones; its billows wear
The color and the sparkle of dear eyes.
Its flowers are sweet with touch of tender hands
That once clasped ours. All things are beautiful
Because of something lovelier than themselves,
Which breathes within them, and will never die.—
Haunted,—but not with any spectral gloom;
Earth is suffused, inhabited by heaven.

These blossoms, gathered in familiar paths,
With dear companions now passed out of sight,

When genius, graced with lineal splendour, glows,
When title shines, with ambient virtues crown'd,
Like some fair almond's flowery pomp it shows,
The pride, the perfume, of the regions round.

Then learn, ye Fair! to soften splendour's ray;
Endure the swain, the youth of low degree;
Let meekness join'd its temp'rate beam display;
'Tis the mild verdure that endears the tree.

Pity the sandall'd swain, the shepherd's boy;
He sighs to brighten a neglected name;
Foe to the dull applause of vulgar joy,
He mourns his lot; he wishes, merits fame.

It is the dead sex of the earth
On which the sun still gazes.

It is all the mountains of love,
Into whose sarcophagus
Peers