Love

The jealous moonlight drifted
To the finger half-uplifted,

Where shone the opal ring

Where the colors danced and shifted
On the pretty, changeful thing.

Just the old, old story

Of light and shade, Love like the opal tender, Like it may be to vary— May be to fade.

Just the old tender story,

Just a glimpse of morning glory
In an earthly Paradise,
With shadowy reflections

In a pair of sweet brown eyes.

Brown eyes a man might well
Be proud to win!

Open to hold his image,
Shut under silken lashes,
Only to shut him in.
O glad eyes, look together,
For life's dark, stormy weather
Grows to a fairer thing

When young eyes look upon it

Through a slender wedding ring.

1173

Richard Doddridge Blackmore [1825-1900]

LOVE

ALL thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,

All are but ministers of Love,

And feed his sacred flame.

Oft in my waking dreams do I
Live o'er again that happy hour,
When midway on the mount I lay,
Beside the ruined tower.

The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene, Had blended with the lights of eve; And she was there, my hope, my joy, My own dear Genevieve!

She leaned against the armèd man,
The statue of the armèd Knight;
She stood and listened to my lay,
Amid the lingering light.

Few sorrows hath she of her own,
My hope! my joy! my Genevieve!
She loves me best whene'er I sing

The songs that make her grieve.

I played a soft and doleful air;
I sang an old and moving story-
An old rude song, that suited well
That ruin wild and hoary.

She listened with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes, and modest grace;
For well she knew I could not choose
But gaze upon her face.

I told her of the Knight that wore
Upon his shield a burning brand;
And that for ten long years he wooed
The Lady of the Land.

I told her how he pined: and ah!
The deep, the low, the pleading tone
With which I sang another's love,
Interpreted my own.

She listened with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes, and modest grace;

And she forgave me, that I gazed

Too fondly on her face!

Love

But when I told the cruel scorn

That crazed that bold and lovely Knight,
And that he crossed the mountain-woods,
Nor rested day nor night;

That sometimes from the savage den,
And sometimes from the darksome shade,
And sometimes starting up at once
In green and sunny glade→

There came and looked him in the face
An angel beautiful and bright;
And that he knew it was a Fiend,
This miserable Knight!

And that, unknowing what he did,
He leaped amid a murderous band,
And saved from outrage worse than death
The Lady of the Land;-

And how she wept and clasped his knees;
And how she tended him in vain-

And ever strove to expiate

The scorn that crazed his brain;

And that she nursed him in a cave;
And how his madness went away,
When on the yellow forest-leaves
A dying man he lay;—

His dying words-but when I reached
That tenderest strain of all the ditty,
My faltering voice and pausing harp
Disturbed her soul with pity!

All impulses of soul and sense
Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve;

The music and the doleful tale,

The rich and balmy eve;

1175

And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng,
And gentle wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherished long!

She wept with pity and delight,
She blushed with love and virgin-shame;
And like the murmur of a dream,
I heard her breathe my name.

Her bosom heaved-she stepped aside,
As conscious of my look she stepped-
Then suddenly, with timorous eye

She fled to me and wept.

She half enclosed me with her arms,
She pressed me with a meek embrace;
And bending back her head, looked up,
And gazed upon my face.

'Twas partly love, and partly fear,
And partly 'twas a bashful art,
That I might rather feel, than see,
The swelling of her heart.

I calmed her fears, and she was calm,
And told her love with virgin pride;
And so I won my Genevieve,

My bright and beauteous Bride.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834]

NESTED

ON THE SUSSEX DOWNS

"LURED," little one? Nay, you've but heard
Love o'er your wild downs roaming;

Not lured, my bird, my light, swift bird,
But homing-homing.

1177

The Letters

"Caught," does she feel? Nay, no net stirred

To catch the heart fore-fated;

Not caught, my bird, my bright, wild bird,
But mated-mated.

And "caged," she fears? Nay, never that word
Of where your brown head rested;

Not caged, my bird, my shy, sweet bird,

But nested--nested!

Habberton Lulham [18

THE LETTERS

STILL on the tower stood the vane,

A black yew gloomed the stagnant air;
I peered athwart the chancel pane,
And saw the altar cold and bare.
A clog of lead was round my feet,
A band of pain across my brow;
"Cold altar, heaven and earth shall meet
Before you hear my marriage vow."

I turned and hummed a bitter song

That mocked the wholesome human heart,
And then we met in wrath and wrong,

We met, but only meant to part.
Full cold my greeting was and dry;
She faintly smiled, she hardly moved;

I saw, with half-unconscious eye,
She wore the colors I approved.

She took the little ivory chest,

With half a sigh she turned the key, Then raised her head with lips compressed, And gave my letters back to me;

And gave the trinkets and the rings,

My gifts, when gifts of mine could please.

As looks a father on the things

Of his dead son, I looked on these.