Though, when other maids stand by,
I may deign thee no reply,
Turn not then away, and sigh,—
Smile, and never heed me!
If our love, indeed, be such
As must thrill at every touch,
Why should others learn as much?—
Smile, and never heed me!
Even if, with maiden pride,
I should bid thee quit my side,
Take...
I Never gave a lock of hair away
To a man, Dearest, except this to thee,
Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully
I ring out to the full brown length and say
“Take it.” My day of youth went yesterday;
My hair no longer bounds to my foot’s glee.
Nor plant I it from rose or myrtle tree,
As girls do, any more. It only may
Now shade on...
NEVER 1 despair! Let the feeble in spirit
Bow like the willow that stoops to the blast.
Droop not in peril! ’T is manhood’s true merit
Nobly to struggle and hope to the last.
When by the sunshine of fortune forsaken
Faint sinks the heart of the feeble with fear,
Stand like the oak of the forest—unshaken,
Never despair—Boys—oh!...
O Winter! wilt thou never, never go?
O summer! but I weary for thy coming,
Longing once more to hear the Luggie flow,
And frugal bees, laboriously humming.
Now the east-wind diseases the infirm,
And they must crouch in corners from rough weather;
Sometimes a winter sunset is a charm,—
When the fired clouds, compacted, blaze together,...
THE sparkling eye that ruled the heart
Hath lost its magic beam,
And in the socket, heavily,
Like warning lamp doth gleam.
The wearied ear remits its toil,
Rejects the music-strain,
And with the folly of the world
No longer loads the brain.
...
* * *
Delicate Hands & Heads will never appear
While Titians &c as in the Book of Moonlight p 5
Facts by our side are never sudden
Until they look around
And then they scare us like a spectre
Protruding from the Ground —
The height of our portentous Neighbor
We never know —
Till summoned to his recognition
By an Adieu —
Adieu for whence
The sage...
Fame's Boys and Girls, who never die
And are too seldom born —
I never hear that one is dead
Without the chance of Life
Afresh annihilating me
That mightiest Belief,
Too mighty for the Daily mind
That tilling its abyss,
Had Madness, had it once or twice
The yawning Consciousness,
Beliefs are Bandaged, like the Tongue
...
I never hear the word "escape"
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation
A flying attitude!
I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars
Only to fail again!
