O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each, O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light O were I thou that she might take me in, Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love, To clothe herself, when all the woods are green O tell her, Swallow, that thy brood is flown: O tell her, brief is life, but love is long, 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. CLXV. Alfred Tennyson. 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 Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,- 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 I should know if it beat right; And I would be the necklace, And all day long to fall and rise With her laughter or her sighs, Alfred Tennyson. CLXVII. LOVE OUT OF SIGHT. THAT out of sight is out of mind They were my friends; 't was sad to part: But yet as things run on they find For men, that will not idlers be, Must lend their hearts to things they see ; I blame it not; I think that when "out of sight" was "out of mind." I knew it when we parted, well, I knew it, but was loth to tell; "out of mind." That friends, however friends they were, But love, the poets say, is blind; Arthur Hugh Clough. CLXVIII. LOVE'S SWEET UNREST. BRIGHT Star! would were steadfast as thou art- Like nature's patient sleepless Eremite, 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, John Keats. CLXIX. AN APOLOGY FOR HAVING LOVED BEFORE. THEY that never had the use 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 : But whom, dying, we approve. To man, that is in th' ev'ning made, Those little drops of light : But when the bright sun did appear, His wonder was determined there, He neither might nor wished to know For that (as mine your beauties now) Employed his utmost sight. Edmund Waller. CLXX. LOVE'S NAME. I ASKED my fair one happy day By what sweet name from Rome or Greece; Lalage, Neæra, Chloris, Sappho, Lesbia, or Doris, Arethusa, or Lucrece. "Ah," replied my gentle fair, "Beloved, what are names but air? 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. |