1--I

When the South sang like a nightingale
Above a bower in May,
The training of Love's vine of flame
Was writ in laws, for lord and dame
To say their yea and nay.

II

When the South sang like a nightingale
Across the flowering night,
And lord and dame held gentle sport,
There came a young princess to Court,
A frost of beauty white.

III

The South sang like a nightingale
To thaw her glittering dream:
No vine of Love her bosom gave,
She drank no wine of Love, but grave

Love lit a beacon in thine eyes,
And I out in the storm,
And lo! the night had taken wings;
I dream me safe and warm.
Love lit a beacon in thine eyes,
A wreckers' light for me;
My heart is broken on the rocks;
I perish in the sea.

BRETHREN, join the social measure,
Sing our sister-Danes beloved,
While round each eye bedimmed with pleasure
Swims the form his youth approved.
And tell me not, that, cold to beauty,
Ye feel not yet her thrilling eye:
The heart that 's fit for friendship's duty
Is fit for gentle woman's tie.

Hence away, the man who wringeth
The soft heart on him bestowed;
Who, where love its fragrance flingeth,
Turns to thorns the flowery road!
And hence the man, whose faith is broken,

Why have you come? to see me in my shame?
A thing to spit on, to despise and scorn?
And then to ask me! You, by whom was torn
And then cast by, like some vile rag, my name!
What shelter could you give me, now, that blame
And loathing would not share? that wolves of vice
Would not besiege with eyes of glaring ice?
Wherein Sin sat not with her face of flame?
'You love me'? God! If yours be love, for lust
Hell must invent another synonym!
If yours be love, then hatred is the way
To Heaven and God! and not with soul but dust

The woefull lamentation of Jane Shore, a goldsmith's wife in London, sometime king Edward IV. his concubine. To the tune of 'Live with me,' &c.

If Rosamonde, that was so faire,
Had cause her sorrowes to declare,
Then let Jane Shore with sorrowe sing,
That was beloved of a king.
Then maids and wives in time amend,
For love and beauty will have end.

In maiden yeares my beautye bright
Was loved dear of lord and knight;
But yet the love that they requir'd,
It was not as my friends desir'd.
Then maids and wives in time amend,

I shed my tears; my tears – my consolation;
And I am silent; my murmur is dead,
My soul, sunk in a depression’s shade,
Hides in its depths the bitter exultation.
I don’t deplore my passing dream of life --
Vanish in dark, the empty apparition!
I care only for my love’s infliction,
And let me die, but only die in love!

The winter comes; I walk alone,
I want no bird to sing;
To those who keep their hearts their own
The winter is the spring.
No flowers to please--no bees to hum--
The coming spring's already come.

I never want the Christmas rose
To come before its time;
The seasons, each as God bestows,
Are simple and sublime.
I love to see the snowstorm hing;
'Tis but the winter garb of spring.

I never want the grass to bloom:
The snowstorm's best in white.
I love to see the tempest come
And love its piercing light.

Drunk with tile wine of divine love
I am oblivious of all.
Abandoning the mosque my leader comes this way
I hear him call.
At the end of worldlines,
For my prayers and fasting
I seek not of God
Heaven's blessings.
As Qais loved Laili
And the world forgot,
As Farhad loved Shirin
And the world remembered not,
So do I love my God
With whom I have merged my lot.
The moth is not afraid of being burnt to death
It rushes to the fire.

I CANNOT die, who drank delight
From the cup of the crescent moon,
And hungrily as men eat bread,
Loved the scented nights of June.
The rest may die—but is there not
Some shining strange escape for me
Who sought in Beauty the bright wine
Of immortality?

The fire of love was burning, yet so low
That in the dark we scarce could see its rays,
And in the light of perfect-placid days
Nothing but smouldering embers dull and slow.
Vainly, for love's delight, we sought to throw
New pleasures on the pyre to make it blaze:
In life's calm air and tranquil-prosperous ways
We missed the radiant heat of long ago.

Then in the night, a night of sad alarms,
Bitter with pain and black with fog of fears,
That drove us trembling to each other's arms --
Across the gulf of darkness and salt tears,