LOVE TRIUMPHANT HELEN'S lips are drifting dust; Drink the ocean's dreamless peace; Lost was Solomon's purple show Stately empires wax and wane- Lasts, though all the worlds lie waste There's a sight that blinds the sun, Language lovelier than words, Hue and scent that shame the rose, Than Pacific's boundless sea, Ye who love have learned it true. -Dear, how long ago we knew! Frederic Lawrence Knowles [1869-1905] LINES LOVE within the lover's breast Burns like Hesper in the West, Till the day and night are done; Lo! it is the morning star. Love! thy love pours down on mine, As the sunlight on the vine, As the snow rill on the vale, As a dewdrop on the rose Ever shall I sing of thee. George Meredith [1828-1909] LOVE AMONG THE RUINS WHERE the quiet-colored end of evening smiles On the solitary pastures where our sheep Half-asleep Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop As they crop Was the site once of a city great and gay, (So they say) Of our country's very capital, its prince Ages since Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far Now, the country does not even boast a tree, To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills Intersect and give a name to (else they run Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall Bounding all, Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed, Twelve abreast. Love Among the Ruins 1155 And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass Never was! Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'erspreads Every vestige of the city, guessed alone, Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame And that glory and that shame alike, the gold Now, the single little turret that remains By the caper overrooted, by the gourd While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time Sprang sublime, And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced And the monarch and his minions and his dames And I know, while thus the quiet-colored eve To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece And the slopes and rills in undistinguished gray Melt away That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair Waits me there In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul For the goal, When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb, Till I come. But he looked upon the city, every side, Far and wide, All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades' Colonnades, All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts, and then, All the men! When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand, On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech In one year they sent a million fighters forth And they built their gods a brazen pillar high Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force- Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns! For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin! Shut them in, With their triumphs and their glories and the rest! Love is best! Robert Browning (1812-1889) EARL MERTOUN'S SONG From "The Blot in the 'Scutcheon" THERE'S a woman like a dewdrop, she's so purer than the purest; And her noble heart's the noblest, yes, and her sure faith's the surest: And her eyes are dark and humid, like the depth on depth of luster Hid i' the harebell, while her tresses, sunnier than the wildgrape cluster, Gush in golden-tinted plenty down her neck's rose-misted Parting at Morning 1157 And this woman says, "My days were sunless and my nights were moonless, Parched the pleasant April herbage, and the lark's heart's outbreak tuneless, If you loved me not!" And I who (ah, for words of flame!) adore her, Who am mad to lay my spirit prostrate palpably before her I may enter at her portal soon, as now her lattice takes me, And by noontide as by midnight make her mine, as hers she makes me! Robert Browning [1812-1889] MEETING AT NIGHT THE gray sea and the long black land; Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears, Robert Browning [1812-1889] PARTING AT MORNING ROUND the cape of a sudden came the sea, Robert Browning [1812-1889] |