E. Robert Bulwer, Lord Lytton

  • From “Lucile”
    O HOUR of all hours, the most blest upon earth,
    Blest hour of our dinners!
                    The land of his birth;
    The face of his first love; the bills that he owes;
    The twaddle of friends, and venom of foes;
    The sermon he heard when to...

  • Midnight past! Not a sound of aught
      Through the silent house, but the wind at his prayers.
    I sat by the dying fire, and thought
      Of the dear dead woman upstairs.

    A night of tears! for the gusty rain
      Had ceased, but the eaves were dripping yet;...

  • A Poet loved a Star,
    And to it whispered nightly,
    “Being so fair, why art thou, love, so far?
    Or why so coldly shine, who shin’st so brightly?
    O Beauty wooed and unpossest!
      O, might I to this beating breast
      But clasp thee once and then die...

  • At Paris it was, at the opera there;
      And she looked like a queen in a book that night,
    With the wreath of pearl in her raven hair,
      And the brooch on her breast so bright.

    Of all the operas that Verdi wrote,
      The best, to my taste, is the Trovatore;...

  • My little love, do you remember,
      Ere we were grown so sadly wise,
    Those evenings in the bleak December,
    Curtained warm from the snowy weather,
    When you and I played chess together,
      Checkmated by each other’s eyes?

      Ah! still I see your soft...