Hark, all you ladies that do sleep!
The fairy queen
Bids you awake, and pity them that weep.
You may do in the dark
What the day doth forbid.
Fear not the dogs that bark;
Night will have all hid.

But if you let your lovers moan,
The fairy queen
Will send abroad her fairies everyone,
That shall pinch black and blue
Your white hands and fair arms,
That did not kindly rue
Your paramours' harms.

In myrtle arbours on the downs,
The fairy queen
This night by moonshine, leading merry rounds,
Holds a watch with sweet Love,

O, Mark yon Rose-tree! when the West
Breathed on her with too warm a zest
She turns her cheek away;
Yet, if one moment he refrain,
She turns her cheek to him again,
And woos him still to stay!

Is she not like a maiden coy,
Prest by some amorous-breathing boy?
Tho' coy, she courts him too:
Winding away her slender form,
She will not have him woo so warm
And yet will have him woo!

How cold are they who say that Love
Must first be planted in the heart,
And cultured by the hand of Time,
To make its leaves and blossoms start!
No! 'tis a plant that springs at once
Up to the full and perfect form;
Unlike the willow or the oak,
It bends not, breaks not in the storm.

How cold are they who say that Love
Must, like the diamond in the mine,
Be sought with care and polished well
Ere we can see its beauties shine!
No! in the soul's blue Heaven it springs,
With beams that Age can never mar,—
Complete, eternal, brilliant, pure,

The sweet embodiment of an ideal,
Of vague desires and bazed unconscious yearnings
Suddenly shapened, the soul's inconstant turnings
At once transfixed; of all that sense doth feel
In mute mysterious glimmerings, nor reveal
By any mode of thought's constrained discernings
In channels of wrought words, and mystic burnings
Imaged and transfused to form's semblative seal:
Nay, these poor similies strained to construe
The soul's fine sense that will not brook expression,
A sense that will not mate with reasoned sense,

Lay lips on lips and limb to limb;
Love's here at last, my love. For him
We shut the whole world out this hour.

He holds us close in fired embrace:
His kisses rain from face to face,
Whose thirst drinks in the implored for shower.

Our pulses faint and fail and rise:
My soul through thine, thine through mine eyes
Meet, and are one in heaven indeed.

In heaven or hell? Is it light of fire
Or light of the sun? desire on desire!
Be it hell's or heaven's love scorns to heed.

CLXXXI

Since love is such that, as ye wot,
Cannot always be wisely used,
I say, therefore, then blame me not
Though I therein have been abused.
For as with cause I am accused,
Guilty I grant, such was my lot
And though it cannot be excused
Yet let such folly be forgot.

For in my years of reckless youth
Methought the power of love so great
That to her laws I bound my truth
And to my will there was no let.
Me list no more so far to fet
Such fruit, lo, as of love ensueth.
The gain was small that was to get

I DO not love to see your beauty fire
The light of eager love in every eye,
Nor the unconscious ardor of desire
Mantle a cheek when you are passing by;
When in the loud world's giddy thoroughfare
Your holy loveliness is noised about—
Lips that my love has prayed to—the gold hair
Where I have babbled all my secrets out—
O then I would I had you in my arms,
Desolate, lonely, broken, and forlorn,
Stripped of your splendor, spoiled of all your charms;
So that my love might prove her haughty scorn—
So I might catch you to my heart, and prove

Would we but love what will not pass away!
The sun that on each morning shines as clear
As when it rose first on the world's first year;
The fresh green leaves that rustle on the spray.
The sun will shine, the leaves will be as gay
When graves are full of all our hearts held dear,
When not a soul of those who loved us here,
Not one, is left us—creatures of decay.

Yea, love the Abiding in the Universe
Which was before, and will be after us.
Nor yet for ever hanker and vainly cry
For human love—the beings that change or die;

When, lo, by break of morning
My love herself adorning
Doth walk the woods so dainty,
Gath'ring sweet violets and cowslips plenty,
The birds enamoured sing and praise my Flora:
Lo, here a new Aurora!