Skip to main content

The Passionate Profiteer to His Love

Come feed with me and be my love,
And pleasures of the table prove,
Where Prunier and The Ivy yield
Choice dainties of the stream and field.

At Claridge thou shalt duckling eat,
Sip vintages both dry and sweet,
And thou shalt squeeze between thy lips
Asparagus with buttered tips.

On caviare my love shall graze,
And plump on salmon mayonnaise,
And browse at Scott's beside thy swain
On lobster Newburg with champagne.

Between hors d'aeuvres and canapes
I'll feast thee on poularde souffle
And every day within thy reach

Love Storm

Many roses in the wind
Are tapping at the window-sash
A hawk is in the sky; his wings
Slowly begin to plash.

The roses with the west wind rapping
Are torn away, and a splash
Of red goes down the billowing air.

Still hangs the hawk, with the whole sky moving
Past him — only a wing-beat proving
The will that holds him there.

The daisies in the grass are bending,
The hawk has dropped, the wind is spending
All the roses, and unending
Rustle of leaves washes out the rending
Cry of a bird.

Dear Sir

There was an old Rabbi of Ur;
He loved a Miss Beaulieu.
She sent him a letter: " Dear Sir . . ."
Then a stone-cold " Yours truly."
Now what she could mean
By the dots in between
Is not plain to be seen.
We can but infer the Rabbi of Ur
Enquired of Miss Beaulieu.

A Smile and a Sigh

A smile because the nights are short!
And every morning brings such pleasure
Of sweet love-making, harmless sport:
Love that makes and finds its treasure;
Love, treasure without measure.

A sigh because the days are long!
Long long these days that pass in sighing,
A burden saddens every song:
While time lags which should be flying,
We live who would be dying.

Aestuary, An

A CALM EVENING .

Look on these waters, with how soft a kiss
They woo the pebbled shore! then steal away,
Like wanton lovers, — but to come again,
And die in music! — There, the bending skies
See all their stars, — and the beach-loving trees,
Osiers and willows, and the watery flowers,
That wreathe their pale roots round the ancient stones,
Make pictures of themselves!

The Love of Christ Which Passeth Knowledge

I bore with thee long weary days and nights,
Through many pangs of heart, through many tears;
I bore with thee, thy hardness, coldness, slights,
For three and thirty years.

Who else had dared for thee what I have dared?
I plunged the depth most deep from bliss above;
I not My flesh, I not My spirit spared:
Give thou Me love for love.

For thee I thirsted in the daily drouth,
For thee I trembled in the nightly frost:
Much sweeter thou than honey to My mouth:
Why wilt thou still be lost?

Hide not, sweetest Love, a sight so pleasing

Hide not, sweetest Love, a sight so pleasing
As those smalls so light composed,
Those fair pillars your knees gently easing,
That tell wonders, being disclosed.
O show me yet a little more:
Here's the way, bar not the door.

How like sister's twines these knees are joined
To resist my bold approaching!
Why should beauty lurk like mines uncoined?
Love is right and no encroaching.
O show me yet a little more:
Here's the way, bar not the door.

Not Love, not War, nor the Tumultuous Swell

Not Love, not War, nor the tumultuous swell
Of civil conflict, nor the wrecks of change,
Nor Duty struggling with afflictions strange—
Not these alone inspire the tuneful shell;
But where untroubled peace and concord dwell,
There also is the Muse not loth to range,
Watching the twilight smoke of cot or grange,
Skyward ascending from a woody dell.
Meek aspirations please her, lone endeavour,
And sage content, and placid melancholy;
She loves to gaze upon a crystal river—
Diaphanous because it travels slowly;