Louise Imogen Guiney

  • I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,
    All day, the commotion of sinewy, mane-tossing horses;
    All night, from their cells, the importunate tramping and neighing.

    Cowards and laggards fall back; but alert to the saddle,
    Straight, grim, and abreast,...

  • The Gusty morns are here,
    When all the reeds ride low with level spear;
    And on such nights as lured us far of yore,
    Down rocky alleys yet, and thro’ the pine,
    The Hound-star and the pagan Hunter shine:
    But I and thou, ah, field-fellow of mine,
    ...

  • The Ox he openeth wide the Doore
      And from the Snowe he calls her inne,
    And he hath seen her smile therefore,
      Our Ladye without Sinne.
        Now soone from Sleepe
        A Starre shall leap,
    And soone arrive both King and Hinde;
                ...

  • High above hate I dwell:
    O storms! farewell.
    Though at my sill your daggered thunders play,
    Lawless and loud to-morrow as to-day,
    To me they sound more small
    Than a young fay’s footfall:
    Soft and far-sunken, forty fathoms low
    In Long Ago,...

  • I would unto my fair restore
    A simple thing:
    The flushing cheek she had before!
    Out-velveting
    No more, no more,
    By Severn shore,
    The carmine grape, the moth’s auroral wing.

    Ah, say how winds in flooding grass
    Unmoor the rose;...

  • Are favoring ladies above thee?
      Are there dowries and lands? Do they say
    Seven others are fair? But I love thee:
              Aultre n’auray!

    All the sea is a lawn in our country;
      All the morrow, our star of delay.
    I am King: let me live on thy...

  • I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,
    All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses;
    All night, from their stalls, the importunate tramping and neighing.

    Let cowards and laggards fall back! but alert to the saddle,
    Straight, grim, and abreast,...

  • True love’s own talisman, which here
    Shakespeare and Sidney failed to teach,
    A steel-and-velvet Cavalier
    Gave to our Saxon speech:

    Chief miracle of theme and touch
    That upstart enviers adore:
    I could not love thee, dear, so much,
    Loved I...

  • Such natural debts of love our Oxford knows,
    So many ancient dues undesecrate,
    I marvel how the landmark of a hate
    For witness unto future time she chose;
    How out of her corroborate ranks arose
    The three, in great denial only great,
    For Art’s...

  • Holy of England! since my light is short
    And faint, O rather by the sun anew
    Of timeless passion set my dial true,
    That with thy saints and thee I may consort,
    And, wafted in the cool, enshadowed port
    Of poets, seem a little sail long due,
    And be...