Aux temps païens, toujours devant les temples fume
L’hécatombe, des dieux apaisant le courroux.
Vénus veut cent ramiers ; Jupiter, cent bœufs roux.
Pour ma déesse, moi, je n’ai rien qu’une plume !
Et j’ose dans l’azur, dont l’encens fait la brume
Chez les Olympiens, m’élever jusqu’à vous,
Et sur le blanc autel de vos divins genoux
Déposer en...
What is a sonnet? ’T is the pearly shell
That murmurs of the far-off murmuring sea;
A precious jewel carved most curiously;
It is a little picture painted well.
What is a sonnet? ’T is the tear that fell
From a great poet’s hidden ecstasy;
A two-edged sword, a star, a song,—ah me!
Sometimes a heavy-tolling funeral bell.
This was...
Take all of me,—I am thine own, heart, soul,
Brain, body,—all; all that I am or dream
Is thine forever; yea, though space should teem
With thy conditions, I ’d fulfil the whole—
Were to fulfil them to be loved of thee.
Oh, love me!—were to love me but a way
To kill me—love me; so to die would be
To live forever. Let me hear thee say...
Dear, if you love me, hold me most your friend,
Chosen from out the many who would bear
Your gladness gladly—heavily your care;
Who best can sympathize, best comprehend,
Where others fail; who, breathless to the end,
Follows your tale of joy or of despair.
Hold me your counsellor, because I dare
To lift my hand to guide you, that I lend...
Dumb Mother of all music, let me rest
On thy great heart while summer days pass by;
While all the heat up-quivers, let me lie
Close gathered to the fragrance of thy breast.
Let not the pipe of birds from some high nest
Give voice unto a thought of melody,
Nor dreaming clouds afloat along the sky
Meet any wind of promise from the west....
“scorn not the sonnet,” though its strength be sapped,
Nor say malignant its inventor blundered;
The corpse that here in fourteen lines is wrapped
Had otherwise been covered with a hundred.
Muses, that sing Love’s sensual empirie,
And lovers kindling your enragèd fires
At Cupid’s bonfires burning in the eye,
Blown with the empty breath of vain desires;
You, that prefer the painted cabinet
Before the wealthy jewels it doth store ye,
That all your joys in dying figures set,
And stain the living substance of your glory;...
Now gentle sleep hath closèd up those eyes
Which, waking, kept my boldest thoughts in awe;
And free access unto that sweet lip lies,
From whence I long the rosy breath to draw.
Methinks no wrong it were, if I should steal
From those two melting rubies one poor kiss;
None sees the theft that would the theft reveal,
Nor rob I her of aught...
From “Fair Virtue”
SHALL I, wasting in despair,
Die, because a woman ’s Fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care,
’Cause another’s rosy are?
Be She fairer than the Day,
Or the flowery meads in May!
If She be not so to me,
What care I, how Fair She be?
Should my heart be grieved or pined,
’Cause I see a woman...
Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art
Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors.—...
