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The Loving Cup of the Papyrus

WISE men use days as husbandmen use bees,
And steal rich drops from every pregnant hour;
Others, like wasps on blossomed apple-trees,
Find gall, not honey, in the sweetest flower.

Congratulations for a scene like this!
The olden times are here—these shall be olden
When, years to come, remembering present bliss,
We sigh for past Papyrian dinners golden.

We thank the gods! we call them back to light—
Call back to hoary Egypt for Osiris,
Who first made wine, to join our board to-night,
And drain this loving cup with the Papyrus.

The Loving Ballad Of Lord Bateman

Lord Bateman was a noble lord,
A noble lord of high degree;
He shipped himself all aboard of a ship,
Some foreign country for to see.

He sailed east, he sailed west,
Until he came to famed Turkey,
Where he was taken and put to prison,
Until his life was quite weary.

All in this prison there grew a tree,
O there it grew so stout and strong!
Where he was chained all by the middle,
Until his life was almost gone.

This Turk he had one only daughter,
The fairest my two eyes eer see;

The Love-Sick Boy

When first my old, old love I knew,
My bosom welled with joy;
My riches at her feet I threw;
I was a love-sick boy!
No terms seemed too extravagant
Upon her to employ -
I used to mope, and sigh, and pant,
Just like a love-sick boy!

But joy incessant palls the sense;
And love unchanged will cloy,
And she became a bore intense
Unto her love-sick boy?
With fitful glimmer burnt my flame,
And I grew cold and coy,
At last, one morning, I became
Another's love-sick boy!

The Loves of the Angels

'Twas when the world was in its prime,
When the fresh stars had just begun
Their race of glory and young Time
Told his first birth-days by the sun;
When in the light of Nature's dawn
Rejoicing, men and angels met
On the high hill and sunny lawn,-
Ere sorrow came or Sin had drawn
'Twixt man and heaven her curtain yet!
When earth lay nearer to the skies
Than in these days of crime and woe,
And mortals saw without surprise
In the mid-air angelic eyes
Gazing upon this world below.

Alas! that Passion should profane

The Lovers' Litany

Eyes of grey -- a sodden quay,
Driving rain and falling tears,
As the steamer wears to sea
In a parting storm of cheers.
Sing, for Faith and Hope are high --
None so true as you and I --
Sing the Lovers' Litany:
"Love like ours can never die!"

Eyes of black -- a throbbing keel,
Milky foam to left and right;
Whispered converse near the wheel
In the brilliant tropic night.
Cross that rules the Southern Sky!
Stars that sweep and wheel and fly,
Hear the Lovers' Litany:
Love like ours can never die!"

The Lover's Farewell

And wilt thou, love, my soul display,
And all my secret thoughts betray?
I strove but could not hold thee fast,
My heart flies off with thee at last.


The favorite daughter of the dawn,
On love's mild breeze will soon be gone:
I strove but could not cease to love,
Nor from my heart the weight remove.


And wilt thou, love, my soul beguile,
And gull thy fav'rite with a smile?
Nay, soft affection answers, nay,
And beauty wings my heart away.


I steal on tiptoe from these bowers,

The Lovers

The Lovers
will drink wine night and day.
They will drink until they can
tear away the veils of intellect and
melt away the layers of shame and modesty.
When in Love,
body, mind, heart and soul don't even exist.
Become this,
fall in Love, and you will not be separated again.

The Love Unfeigned

O yonge fresshe folkes, he or she,
In which that love up groweth with your age,
Repeyreth hoom from worldly vanitee,
And of your herte up-casteth the visage
To thilke god that after his image
Yow made, and thinketh al nis but a fayre
This world, that passeth sone as floures fayre.

And loveth him, the which that right for love
Upon a cros, our soules for to beye,
First starf, and roos, and sit in hevene a-bove;
For he nil falsen no wight, dar I seye,
That wol his herte al hoolly on him leye.
And sin he best to love is, and most meke,

The Love That Goes A-Begging

Oh Loves there are that enter in,
And Loves there are that wait,
And Loves that sit a-weeping
Whose joy will come too late.
For some there be that ope their doors,
And some there be that close,
And Love must go a-begging,
But whither, no one knows.
His feet are on the thorny ways,
And on the dew-cold grass,
No ears have ever heard him sing,
No eyes have seen him pass.
And yet he wanders thro' the world
And makes the meadows sweet,
For all his tears and weariness
Have flowered beneath his feet.
The little purple violet

The Love Sonnets Of Proteus. Part IV Vita Nova XCVIII

SONNET IN ASSONANCE
A thousand bluebells blossom in the wood,
Shut in a tangled brake of briar roses,
And guarded well from every wanton foot,
A treasure by no eye of man beholden,
No eye but mine. No other tongue hath spoken
Out to the joyless world what hidden joys
Lie there untasted, mines of wealth unnoted,
While a starved world without lives blank and void.
--Ah, couldst thou know, poor wretch, what I have known,
See what I saw upon that bank enshrinèd,
Soft pity had not wholly left thy soul