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 white hand
Hovering warm o’er Queen and Knight;
Brave Pawns in valiant battle...
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;
And Mario can soothe, with a tenor note,
The souls in purgatory.
The...
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 blest!”
That Star her Poet’s love,
So wildly warm, made human;
And leaving, for...
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;
And the moon looked forth, as though in pain,
With her face all white and wet:
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 church he last went;
The money he borrowed, the money he spent;
All of these things...
