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THE TRAGEDY OF LOVE

SONG

My silks and fine array,

My smiles and languished air,

By Love are driven away;

And mournful lean Despair

Brings me yew to deck my grave:
Such end true lovers have.

His face is fair as heaven

When springing buds unfold:

O why to him was't given,

Whose heart is wintry cold?

His breast is Love's all-worshipped tomb,

Where all Love's pilgrims come.

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When she took it from my trembling fingers

With a hand as chill --

Ah, the flying touch upon them lingers,
Stays, and thrills them still!

Withered, faded, pressed between the pages,

Crumpled fold on fold,--

Once it lay upon her breast, and ages

Cannot make it old!

Harriet Prescott Spofford [1835

HEREAFTER

LOVE, when all the years are silent, vanished quite and laid to rest,

When you and I are sleeping, folded breathless breast to

breast,

When no morrow is before us, and the long grass tosses o'er

us,

And our grave remains forgotten, or by alien footsteps pressed

Still that love of ours will linger, that great love enrich the earth,

Sunshine in the heavenly azure, breezes blowing joyous mirth;

Fragrance fanning off from flowers, melody of summer showers,

Sparkle of the spicy wood-fires round the happy autumn hearth.

That's our love. But you and I, dear-shall we linger with

it yet,

Mingled in one dew-drop, tangled in one sunbeam's golden

net

On the violet's purple bosom, I the sheen, but you the blos

som,

Stream on sunset winds, and be the haze with which some hill is wet?

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Or, beloved-if ascending-when we have endowed the world

With the best bloom of our being, whither will our way be

whirled,

Through what vast and starry spaces, toward what awful, holy places,

With a white light on our faces, spirit over spirit furled?

Only this our yearning answers: wheresoe'er that way defile, Not a film shall part us through the eons of that mighty while,

In the fair eternal weather, even as phantoms still together, Floating, floating, one forever, in the light of God's great smile.

Harriet Prescott Spofford [1835

ENDYMION

THE apple trees are hung with gold,
And birds are loud in Arcady,

The sheep lie bleating in the fold,
The wild goat runs across the wold,
But yesterday his love he told,

I know he will come back to me.

O rising moon! O Lady moon!

Be you my lover's sentinel,

You cannot choose but know him well,

For he is shod with purple shoon,

You cannot choose but know my love,

For he a shepherd's crook doth bear,

And he is soft as any dove,

And brown and curly is his hair.

The turtle now has ceased to call
Upon her crimson-footed groom,
The gray wolf prowls about the stall,
The lily's singing seneschal
Sleeps in the lily-bell, and all

The violet hills are lost in gloom.

O risen moon! O holy moon!
Stand on the top of Helice,
And if my own true love you see,
Ah! if you see the purple shoon,
The hazel crook, the lad's brown hair,
The goat-skin wrapped about his arm,
Tell him that I am waiting where

The rushlight glimmers in the Farm.

The falling dew is cold and chill,
And no bird sings in Arcady,
The little fauns have left the hill,

Even the tired daffodil

Has closed its gilded doors, and still

My lover comes not back to me.

False moon! False moon! O waning moon!
Where is my own true lover gone,
Where are the lips vermilion,

The shepherd's crook, the purple shoon?
Why spread that silver pavilion,

Why wear that veil of drifting mist?

Ah! thou hast young Endymion,

Thou hast the lips that should be kissed!

Oscar Wilde [1856-1900]

"LOVE IS A TERRIBLE THING"

I WENT out to the farthest meadow,
I lay down in the deepest shadow;
And I said unto the earth,"Hold me,"
And unto the night, "O enfold me!"

And unto the wind petulantly

I cried, "You know not for you are free!"

And I begged the little leaves to lean
Low and together for a safe screen;

Then to the stars I told my tale:
"That is my home-light, there in the vale,

“And O, I know that I shall return,
But let me lie first mid the unfeeling fern;

The Ballad of the Angel

"For there is a flame that has blown too near, And there is a name that has grown too dear, And there is a fear"

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And to the still hills and cool earth and far sky I made moan, "The heart in my bosom is not my own!

"O would I were free as the wind on wing; Love is a terrible thing!"

Grace Fallow Norton [18

THE BALLAD OF THE ANGEL

"WHO is it knocking in the night,

That fain would enter in?"
"The ghost of Lost Delight am I,
The sin you would not sin,

Who comes to look in your two eyes
And see what might have been."

"Oh, long ago and long ago

I cast you forth," he said,
"For that your eyes were all too blue,
Your laughing mouth too red,
And my torn soul was tangled in
The tresses of your head."

"Now mind you with what bitter words
You cast me forth from you?"

"I bade you back to that fair Hell

From whence your breath you drew,

And with great blows I broke my heart
Lest it might follow too.

"Yea, from the grasp of your white hands

I freed my hands that day,

And have I not climbed near to God

As these His henchmen may?"

"Ah, man, ah, man! 'twas my two hands
That led you all the way."

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