I Fear thy kisses, gentle maiden;
Thou needest not fear mine;
My spirit is too deeply laden
Ever to burden thine.
I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion;
Thou needest not fear mine;
Innocent is the heart’s devotion
With which I worship thine.
Child in thy beauty; empress in thy pride;
Sweet and unyielding as the summer’s tide;
Starlike to tremble, starlike to abide.
Guiltless of wounding, yet more true than steel;
Gem-like thy light to flash and to conceal;
Tortoise to bear, insect to see and feel.
Blushing and shy, yet dread we thy disdain;
Smiling, a sunbeam fraught with...
From “As You Like It,” Act III. Sc. 5.
THINK not I love him, though I ask for him;
’T is but a peevish boy:—yet he talks well;—
But what care I for words?—yet words do well,
When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.
But, sure, he ’s proud; and yet his pride becomes him:
He ’ll make a proper man: The best thing in him
Is his...
A Girl, who has so many wilful ways
She would have caused Job’s patience to forsake him;
Yet is so rich in all that ’s girlhood’s praise,
Did Job himself upon her goodness gaze,
A little better she would surely make him.
Yet is this girl I sing in naught uncommon,
And very far from angel yet, I trow.
Her faults, her sweetness, are...
“Hebrew Melodies”
SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that ’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes,
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which...
She is not fair to outward view,
As many maidens be;
Her loveliness I never knew
Until she smiled on me:
O, then I saw her eye was bright,—
A well of love, a spring of light.
But now her looks are coy and cold;
To mine they ne’er reply;
And yet I cease not to behold
The love-light in her eye:
Her very...
Here is one leaf reserved for me,
From all thy sweet memorials free;
And here my simple song might tell
The feelings thou must guess so well.
But could I thus, within thy mind,
One little vacant corner find,
Where no impression yet is seen,
Where no memorial yet has been,
O, it should be my sweetest care
To write my name...
Ye blushing virgins happy are
In the chaste nunnery of her breasts,
For he ’d profane so chaste a fair,
Who e’er should call them Cupid’s nests.
Transplanted thus how bright ye grow,
How rich a perfume do ye yield!
In some close garden cowslips so
Are sweeter than i’ th’ open field.
In those white cloisters live secure...
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicæan barks of yore,
That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur...
That which her slender waist confined
Shall now my joyful temples bind;
No monarch but would give his crown,
His arms might do what this hath done.
It was my heaven’s extremest sphere,
The pale which held that lovely deer:
My joy, my grief, my hope, my love,
Did all within this circle move.
A narrow compass! and yet there...
