Poesy! thou sweet'st content
That e'er Heaven to mortals lent,
Though for thy sake I am crost,
Though my best hopes I have lost,
And I knew thou'dst make my trouble
Ten times more than ten times double,
I should love and keep thee too,
Spite of all the world could do.
Though thou be to them a scorn
That to nought but earth are born;
Let my life no longer be,
Than I am in love with thee! ~ WITHER.


I always loved thee gentle Poesy!
And though thou oft hast served to work me woe,

Oh! leave the past to buy its own dead.
The past is naught to us, the present all.
What need of last year's leaves to strew Love's bed?
What need of ghosts to grace a festival?
I would not, if I could, those days recall,
Those days not ours. For us the feast is spread.
The lamps are lit, and music plays withal.
Then let us love and leave the rest unsaid.
This island is our home. Around it roar
Great gulfs and oceans, channels, straits and seas.
What matter in what wreck we reached the shore,
So we both reached it? We can mock at these.

HERE is the dim enchanted wood
Your face, a mystery divine,
But half revealed, half understood,
Appears the counterpart of mine.

Beyond the wood the daylight lies;
Cruel and hard, it lies in wait
To steal the magic from your eyes
And from your lips the thrill of fate.

Ah, stay with me a little while
Here, where the magic shadows rest,
Where all my world is in your smile
And all my heaven on your breast.

Ah no!--cling close, what need to move,
What need to advance or explore?
We came here blindly, led by love,

THOU liest dead, and there will be no memory left behind
Of thee or thine in all the earth, for never didst thou bind
The roses of Pierian streams upon thy brow; thy doom
Is now to flit with unknown ghosts in cold and nameless gloom.

AND so we parted, love, oblivious
That we were parting! With our laughter light,
Flouting the future, on the morrow bright
At our old tryst we would once more discuss
The wonder of our love miraculous:
While even then Fate waited, swift to smite.
So you have gone, large-eyed, across the Night,
And I stand straining widowed arms! Yet thus
I want your memory—no tears, no pain,
No presage of chill death, nor any fears;
Your wide glance bridging all eternity
With one calm faith. Is't not an augury

Hate is only Love that has missed its way.


Had it been when I came to the valley where the paths parted asunder,
Chance had led my feet to the way of love, not hate,
I might have cherished you well, have been to you fond and faithful,
Great as my hatred is, so might my love have been great.

Each cold word of mine might have been a kiss impassioned,
Warm with the throb of my heart, thrilled with my pulse's leap,
And every glance of scorn, lashing, pursuing, and stinging,
As a look of tenderness would have been wondrous and deep.

O false as fair
I am forgotten, then, by thee!
Or haply on another shine
The eyes that once looked into mine
Pretence of love — all faithlessly

Out! nought I care
For such as can true love betray!
Love on, forsworn, your little day:

Ye are nought to me.

I heard a cry in the night,
A thousand miles it came,
Sharp as a flash of light,
My name, my name!

It was your voice I heard,
You waked and loved me so--
I send you back this word,
I know, I know!

I fear to love thee, Sweet, because
Love's the ambassador of loss;
White flake of childhood, clinging so
To my soiled raiment, thy shy snow
At tenderest touch will shrink and go.
Love me not, delightful child.
My heart, by many snares beguiled,
Has grown timorous and wild.
It would fear thee not at all,
Wert thou not so harmless-small.
Because thy arrows, not yet dire,
Are still unbarbed with destined fire,
I fear thee more than hadst thou stood
Full-panoplied in womanhood.

With a Copy of My Poems

I can write no stately proem
As a prelude to my lay;
From a poet to a poem
I would dare to say.

For if of these fallen petals
One to you seem fair,
Love will waft it till it settles
On your hair.

And when wind and winter harden
All the loveless land,
It will whisper of the garden,
You will understand.