To-day, dear heart, but just to-day,
The sunshine over all,
The roses crimsoning the air
Along the garden wall!
Then let the dream and dreamer die;
Whate’er shall be, shall be—
To-day will still be thine and mine
To all eternity.
And oh, there is no glory, dear,
When all the world is done,
There is no...
I Will not let you say a woman’s part
Must be to give exclusive love alone;
Dearest, although I love you so, my heart
Answers a thousand claims besides your own.
I love,—what do I not love? Earth and air
Find space within my heart, and myriad things
You would not deign to heed are cherished there,
And vibrate on its very inmost...
[Wither’s Song, or “Sonnet,” appeared first in his “Fidelia” in 1615, and later with some changes in “Fair Virtue,” 1622. Jonson’s parody, here given, came out in a Collection of Verses, in 1620.]
SHALL I mine affections slack,
’Cause I see a woman’s Black?
Or myself, with care cast down,
’Cause I see a woman Brown?
Be She blacker than the night,...
O God, I cannot walk the Way,—
The thorns, the thirst, the darkness,
And bleeding feet and aching heart!
I hear the songs and revels of the throng,—
They sneer upon my downcast face with scorn,—
Yet, O my God, I must and shall walk with Thee!
O God, I cannot take the Truth!
Far easier honeyed hopes and falsehoods fair,
But Truth...
“WHO would not go”
With buoyant steps, to gain that blessed portal,
Which opens to the land we long to know?
Where shall be satisfied the soul’s immortal,
Where we shall drop the wearying and the woe
In resting so?
“Ah, who would fear?”
Since, sometimes through the distant pearly portal,
...
Well, I've waited mighty patient while they all came rolling in,
Mister Lawson, Mister Dyson, and the others of their kin,
With their dreadful, dismal stories of the Overlander's camp,
How his fire is always smoky, and his boots are always damp;
And they paint it so terrific it would fill one's soul with gloom --
...
