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O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each,
That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,
And dark and true and tender is the North.

O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light
Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill,
And cheep and twitter twenty million loves.

O were I thou that she might take me in,
And lay me on her bosom, and her heart
Would rock the snowy cradle till I died.

Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love,
Delaying as the tender ash delays

To clothe herself, when all the woods are green

O tell her, Swallow, that thy brood is flown :
Say to her, I do but wanton in the South,
But in the North long since my nest was made.

O tell her, brief is life, but love is long,
And brief the sun of summer in the North,
And brief the moon of beauty in the South.

O Swallow, flying from the golden woods,

Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine,

And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee.

Alfred Tennyson.

CLXV.

LOVE'S PROTESTATION.

LOVE-SIGHT.

WHEN do I see thee most, beloved one?

When in the light the spirits of mine eyes

Before thy face, their altar, solemnize

The worship of that Love through thee made known?

Or when in the dusk hours, we two alone,

Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
And my soul only sees thy soul its own?
O Love, my Love! If I should no more see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,

Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,—
How then should sound upon life's darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
The wind of Death's imperishable wing?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

CLXVI.

LOVE'S PROTESTATION.

THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER.

IT is the miller's daughter,

And she is grown so dear, so dear,

That I would be the jewel

That trembles in her ear:

For hid in ringlets day and night,

I'd touch her neck so warm and white.

And I would be the girdle

About her dainty, dainty waist,
And her heart should beat against me
In sorrow and in rest :

And I should know if it beat right;
I'd clasp it round so close and tight.

And I would be the necklace,

And all day long to fall and rise
Upon her balmy bosom,

With her laughter or her sighs,
And I would lie so light, so light,
I scarce should be unclasped at night.

Alfred Tennyson.

CLXVII.

LOVE OUT OF SIGHT.

THAT out of sight is out of mind
Is true of most we leave behind;
It is not sure, nor can be true,

My own, my only Love, of you.

They were my friends; 't was sad to part: Almost a tear began to start;

But yet as things run on they find

That out of sight is out of mind.

For men, that will not idlers be,

Must lend their hearts to things they see;
And friends who leave them far behind
When out of sight are out of mind.

I blame it not; I think that when
The cold and silent meet again,
Kind hearts will yet as erst be kind,
'T was

"out of sight" was "out of mind."

I knew it when we parted, well,
I knew it, but was loth to tell;

I felt before what now I find,

"

That out of sight" is "out of mind."

That friends, however friends they were,
Still deal with things as things occur,
And that, excepting for the blind,
What's out of sight is out of mind.

But love, the poets say, is blind;
So out of sight and out of mind
Need not, nor will, I think, be true,
My own and only Love, of you.

Arthur Hugh Clough.

CLXVIII.

LOVE'S SWEET UNREST.

BRIGHT Star! would I were steadfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors :No-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, Pillowed upon my fair Love's ripening breast To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest;
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever,-or else swoon to death.

John Keats.

CLXIX.

AN APOLOGY FOR HAVING LOVED BEFORE.

THEY that never had the use
Of the grape's surprising juice,
To the first delicious cup
All their reason render up;
Neither do nor care to know
Whether it be best or no.

So they that are to love inclined,
Swayed by chance, not choice, or art,

To the first that's fair or kind

Make a present of their heart :
It is not she that first we love,

But whom, dying, we approve.

To man, that is in th' ev'ning made,
Stars gave the first delight,
Admiring, in the gloomy shade,

Those little drops of light :
Then at Aurora, whose fair hand
Removed them from the skies,
He gazing towards the east did stand,
She entertained his eyes.

But when the bright sun did appear,
All these he 'gan despise;

His wonder was determined there,
And could no higher rise.

He neither might nor wished to know
A more refulgent light :

For that (as mine your beauties now)

Employed his utmost sight.

Edmund Waller.

CLXX.

LOVE'S NAME.

I ASKED my fair one happy day

What I should call her in my lay;

By what sweet name from Rome or Greece;

Lalage, Neæra, Chloris,

Sappho, Lesbia, or Doris,

Arethusa, or Lucrece.

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Choose thou what ever suits the line;

Call me Sappho, call me Chloris,

Call me Lalage or Doris,

Only, only-call me thine."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

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