• Give all to love;
    Obey thy heart;
    Friends, kindred, days,
    Estate, good-fame,
    Plans, credit, and the Muse,—
    Nothing refuse.

    'Tis a brave master;
    Let it have scope:
    Follow it utterly,
    Hope beyond hope:
    High and more high
    It dives into noon,
    With wing unspent,
    Untold intent;
    But it is a God,
    Knows its own...

  • Amarantha sweet and fair
    Ah braid no more that shining hair!
    As my curious hand or eye
    Hovering round thee let it fly.

    Let it fly as unconfin'd
    As its calm ravisher, the wind,
    Who hath left his darling th'East,
    To wanton o'er that spicy nest.

    Ev'ry tress must be confest
    But neatly tangled at the best;
    Like a clue of golden thread,
    ...

  • I have loved flowers that fade,
    Within whose magic tents
    Rich hues have marriage made
    With sweet unmemoried scents:
    A honeymoon delight—
    A joy of love at sight,
    That ages in an hour—
    My song be like a flower!

    I have loved airs that die
    Before their charm is writ
    Along a liquid sky
    Trembling to welcome it.
    Notes, that with...

  • Escape me?
    Never—
    Beloved!
    While I am I, and you are you,
    So long as the world contains us both,
    Me the loving and you the loth,
    While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
    My life is a fault at last, I fear:
    It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
    Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed.
    But what if I fail of my purpose here?
    It is...

  • I wonder do you feel today
    As I have felt since, hand in hand,
    We sat down on the grass, to stray
    In spirit better through the land,
    This morn of Rome and May?

    For me, I touched a thought, I know,
    Has tantalized me many times,
    (Like turns of thread the spiders throw
    Mocking across our path) for rhymes
    To catch at and let go.

    Help me to...

  • 1

    The gray sea and the long black land;
    And the yellow half-moon large and low;
    And the startled little waves that leap
    In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
    As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
    And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.
    2

    Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
    Three fields to cross till a...
  • O my Luve's like a red, red rose
    That's newly sprung in June:
    O my Luve's like the melodie
    That's sweetly play'd in tune!

    As fair thou art, my bonnie lass,
    So deep in love am I:
    And I will love thee still, my dear,
    Till a' the seas gang dry:

    Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
    And the rocks melt with the sun;
    I will luve thee still...

  • Bid me to live, and I will live
    Thy Protestant to be;
    Or bid me love, and I will give
    A loving heart to thee.

    A heart as soft, a heart as kind,
    A heart as sound and free,
    As in the whole world thou canst find,
    That heart I'll give to thee.

    Bid that heart stay, and it will stay,
    To honor thy decrees;
    Or bid it...

  • Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
    Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
    The liquefaction of her clothes.

    Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
    That brave vibration each way free,
    Oh, how that glittering taketh me!

  • And in Life's noisiest hour,
    There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
    The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy.

    You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within;
    And to the leading Love-throb in the Heart
    Thro' all my Being, thro' my pulse's beat;
    You lie in all my many Thoughts, like Light,
    Like the fair light of Dawn, or summer Eve...