XVIII

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed:

But thy eternal Summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

XXIII

As an unperfect actor on the stage,

Who with his fear is put besides his part,

Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,

Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart;

So I, for fear of trust, forget to say

The perfect ceremony of love's rite,

And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,

O'ercharged with burden of mine own love's might.

O, let my books be then the eloquence

And dumb presagers of my speaking breast;

Who plead for love, and look for recompense,

More than that tongue that more hath more expressed.

O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:

To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.

XXIX

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself, and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee: and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate:

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

XXX

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

And weep afresh love's long-since cancelled woe,

And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before:

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restored, and sorrows end.

XXXII

If thou survive my well-contented day

When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover,

And shalt by fortune once more re-survey

These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,

Compare them with the bettering of the time,

And though they be outstripped by every pen,

Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,

Exceeded by the height of happier men.

O, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:

"Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age,

A dearer birth than this his love had brought,

To march in ranks of better equipage:

But since he died, and poets better prove,

Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love."

XXXIII

Full many a glorious morning have I seen

Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,

Kissing with golden lace the meadows green,

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.

Anon permit the basest clouds to ride

With ugly rack on his celestial face,

And from the forlorn world his visage hide,

Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:

Even so my sun one early morn did shine

With all-triumphant splendor on my brow;

But out, alack! he was but one hour mine,

The region cloud hath masked him from me now.

Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;

Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.

LX

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end;

Each changing place with that which goes before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

Nativity, once in the main of light,

Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,

Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,

And Time that gave, doth now his gift confound.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,

And delves the parallels in beauty's brow;

Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,

And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:

And yet, to times in hope, my verse shall stand

Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

LXXI

No longer mourn for me when I am dead,

Than you shall hear the surly, sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled

From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:

Nay, if you read this line, remember not

The hand that writ it; for I love you so,

That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,

If thinking on me then should make you woe.

O, if (I say) you look upon this verse,

When I perhaps compounded am with clay,

Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,

But let your love even with my life decay;

Lest the wise world should look into your moan,

And mock you with me after I am gone.

LXXIII

That time of year thou may'st in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see'st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

CIV

To me, fair friend, you never can be old;

For as you were when first your eye I eyed,

Such seems your beauty still. Three Winters cold

Have from the forests shook three Summers' pride;

Three beauteous Springs to yellow Autumn turned

In process of the seasons have I seen,

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,

Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.

Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;

So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,

Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived:

For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:

Ere you were born was beauty's Summer dead.

CVI

When in the chronicle of wasted time

I see descriptions of the fairest wights,

And beauty making beautiful old rhyme

In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights;

Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best

Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,

I see their antique pen would have expressed

Even such a beauty as you master now.

So all their praises are but prophecies

Of this our time, all, you prefiguring;

And, for they looked but with divining eyes,

They had not skill enough your worth to sing:

For we, which now behold these present days,

Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

CIX

O, never say that I was false of heart

Though absence seemed my flame to qualify:

As easy might I from myself depart

As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie;

That is my home of love; if I have ranged,

Like him that travels, I return again,

Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,

So that myself bring water for my stain.

Never believe, though in my nature reigned

All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,

That it could so preposterously be stained

To leave for nothing all thy sum of good!

For nothing this wide universe I call,

Save thou, my rose: in it thou art my all.

CXVI

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

If this be error, and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

CXXX

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, - yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go, -

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.

CXLVI

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,

Pressed by these rebel powers that thee array,

Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,

Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

Why so large cost, having so short a lease,

Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?

Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,

Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?

Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,

And let that pine to aggravate thy store;

Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;

Within be fed, without be rich no more:

So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men;

And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.

William Shakespeare [1564-1616]

"ALEXIS, HERE SHE STAYED"

Alexis, here she stayed; among these pines,

Sweet hermitress, she did alone repair;

Here did she spread the treasure of her hair,

More rich than that brought from the Colchian mines.

She set her by these musked eglantines,

The happy place the print seems yet to bear;

Her voice did sweeten here thy sugared lines,

To which winds, trees, beasts, birds, did lend their ear.

Me here she first perceived, and here a morn

Of bright carnations did o'erspread her face;

Here did she sigh, here first my hopes were born,

And I first got a pledge of promised grace:

But, ah! what served it to be happy so,

Since passed pleasures double but new woe?

William Drummond [1585-1649]

"WERE I AS BASE AS IS THE LOWLY PLAIN"

Were I as base as is the lowly plain,

And you, my love, as high as heaven above,

Yet should the thoughts of me, your humble swain,

Ascend to heaven in honor of my love.

Were I as high as heaven above the plain,

And you, my love, as humble and as low

As are the deepest bottoms of the main,

Wheresoe'er you were, with you my love should go.

Were you the earth, dear love, and I the skies,

My love should shine on you, like to the sun,

And look upon you with ten thousand eyes,

Till heaven waxed blind and till the world were done.

Wheresoe'er I am, - below, or else above you, -

Wheresoe'er you are, my heart shall truly love you.

Joshua Sylvester [1563-1618]

A SONNET OF THE MOON

Look how the pale Queen of the silent night

Doth cause the ocean to attend upon her,

And he, as long as she is in his sight,

With his full tide is ready her to honor:

But when the silver wagon of the Moon

Is mounted up so high he cannot follow,

The sea calls home his crystal waves to moan,

And with low ebb doth manifest his sorrow.

So you that are the sovereign of my heart,

Have all my joys attending on your will,

My joys low-ebbing when you do depart,

When you return, their tide my heart doth fill.

So as you come, and as you do depart,

Joys ebb and flow within my tender heart.

Charles Best [fl. 1602]

TO MARY UNWIN

Mary! I want a lyre with other strings,

Such aid from Heaven as some have feigned they drew,

An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new

And undebased by praise of meaner things;

That, ere through age or woe I shed my wings,

I may record thy worth with honor due,

In verse as musical as thou art true,

And that immortalizes whom it sings:

But thou hast little need. There is a Book

By seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light,

On which the eyes of God not rarely look,

A chronicle of actions just and bright:

There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary, shine;

And, since thou own'st that praise, I spare thee mine.

William Cowper [1731-1800]

"WHY ART THOU SILENT"

Why art thou silent? Is thy love a plant

Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air

Of absence withers what was once so fair?

Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant?

Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant,

Bound to thy service with unceasing care -

The mind's least generous wish a mendicant

For naught but what thy happiness could spare.

Speak! - though this soft warm heart, once free to hold

A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine,

Be left more desolate, more dreary cold

Than a forsaken bird's-nest filled with snow

'Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine -

Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know!

William Wordsworth [1770-1850]

SONNETS

From "The House of Life"

IV

LOVESIGHT

When do I see thee most, beloved one?

When in the light the spirits of mine eyes

Before thy face, their altar, solemnize

The worship of that Love through thee made known?

Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,)

Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies

Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,

And my soul only sees thy soul its own?

O love, my love! if I no more should see

Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,

Nor image of thine eyes in any spring, -

How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope

The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,

The wind of Death's imperishable wing?

V

HEART'S HOPE

By what word's power, the key of paths untrod,

Shall I the difficult deeps of Love explore,

Till parted waves of Song yield up the shore

Even as that sea which Israel crossed dryshod?

For lo! in some poor rhythmic period,

Lady, I fain would tell how evermore

Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor

Thee from myself, neither our love from God.

Yea, in God's name, and Love's, and thine, would I

Draw from one loving heart such evidence

As to all hearts all things shall signify;

Tender as dawn's first lull-fire, and intense

As instantaneous penetrating sense,

In Spring's birth-hour, of other Springs gone by.

XV

THE BIRTH-BOND

Have you not noted, in some family

Where two were born of a first marriage-bed,

How still they own their gracious bond, though fed

And nursed on the forgotten breast and knee? -

How to their father's children they shall be

In act and thought of one goodwill; but each

Shall for the other have, in silence speech,

And in a word complete community?

Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love,

That among souls allied to mine was yet

One nearer kindred than life hinted of.

O born with me somewhere that men forget,

And though in years of sight and sound unmet,

Known for my soul's birth-partner well enough!

XIX

SILENT NOON

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass, -

The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:

Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms

'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.

All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,

Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge

Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.

'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly

Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: -

So this winged hour is dropped to us from above.

Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,

This close-companioned inarticulate hour

When twofold silence was the song of love.

XXVI

MID-RAPTURE

Thou lovely and beloved, thou my love;

Whose kiss seems still the first; whose summoning eyes,

Even now, as for our love-world's new sunrise,

Shed very dawn; whose voice, attuned above

All modulation of the deep-bowered dove,

Is like a hand laid softly on the soul;

Whose hand is like a sweet voice to control

Those worn tired brows it hath the keeping of: -

What word can answer to thy word, - what gaze

To thine, which now absorbs within its sphere

My worshipping face, till I am mirrored there

Light-circled in a heaven of deep-drawn rays?

What clasp, what kiss mine inmost heart can prove,

O lovely and beloved, O my love?

XXXI

HER GIFTS

High grace, the dower of queens; and therewithal

Some wood-born wonder's sweet simplicity;

A glance like water brimming with the sky

Or hyacinth-light where forest-shadows fall;

Such thrilling pallor of cheek as doth enthrall

The heart; a mouth whose passionate forms imply

All music and all silence held thereby;

Deep golden locks, her sovereign coronal;

A round reared neck, meet column of Love's shrine

To cling to when the heart takes sanctuary;

Hands which for ever at Love's bidding be,

And soft-stirred feet still answering to his sign: -

These are her gifts, as tongue may tell them o'er.

Breathe low her name, my soul; for that means more.

XXXIV

THE DARK GLASS

Not I myself know all my love for thee:

How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh

To-morrow's dower by gage of yesterday?

Shall birth and death, and all dark names that be

As doors and windows bared to some loud sea,

Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray;

And shall my sense pierce love, - the last relay

And ultimate outpost of eternity?

Lo! what am I to Love, the lord of all?

One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand, -

One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand.

Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest call

And veriest touch of powers primordial

That any hour-girt life may understand.

XLIX

WILLOWWOOD

I sat with Love upon a woodside well,

Leaning across the water, I and he;

Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,

But touched his lute wherein was audible

The certain secret thing he had to tell:

Only our mirrored eyes met silently

In the low wave; and that sound came to be

The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.

And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;

And with his foot and with his wing-feathers

He swept the spring that watered my heart's drouth.

Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,

And as I stooped, her own lips rising there

Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.

LXXVIII

BODY'S BEAUTY

Or Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told

(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,)

That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive,

And her enchanted hair was the first gold.

And still she sits, young while the earth is old,

And, subtly of herself contemplative,

Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave,

Till heart and body and life are in its hold.

The rose and poppy are her flowers: for where

Is he not found, O Lilith! whom shed scent

And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?

Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went

Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent,

And round his heart one strangling golden hair.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti [1828-1882]

SONNETS

MEETING

They made the chamber sweet with flowers and leaves,

And the bed sweet with flowers on which I lay;

While my soul, love-bound, loitered on its way.

I did not hear the birds about the eaves,

Nor hear the reapers talk among the sheaves:

Only my soul kept watch from day to day,

My thirsty soul kept watch for one away: -

Perhaps he loves, I thought, remembers, grieves.

At length there came the step upon the stair,

Upon the lock the old familiar hand:

Then first my spirit seemed to scent the air

Of Paradise; then first the tardy sand

Of time ran golden; and I felt my hair

Put on a glory, and my soul expand.

THE FIRST DAY

I wish I could remember the first day,

First hour, first moment of your meeting me,

If bright or dim the season, it might be

Summer or Winter for aught I can say;

So unrecorded did it slip away,

So blind was I to see and to foresee,

So dull to mark the budding of my tree

That would not blossom yet for many a May.

If only I could recollect it, such

A day of days! I let it come and go

As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow;

It seemed to mean so little, meant so much;

If only now I could recall that touch,

First touch of hand in hand - Did one but know!

REMEMBER

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more, day by day,

You tell me of our future that you planned:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

REST

O earth, lie heavily upon her eyes;

Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth;

Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth

With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs.

She hath no questions, she hath no replies,

Hushed in and curtained with a blessed dearth

Of all that irked her from the hour of birth;

With stillness that is almost Paradise.

Darkness more clear than noonday holdeth her,

Silence more musical than any song;

Even her very heart has ceased to stir:

Until the morning of Eternity

Her rest shall not begin nor end, but be;

And when she wakes she will not think it long.

Christina Georgina Rossetti [1830-1894]

HOW MY SONGS OF HER BEGAN

God made my lady lovely to behold; -

Above the painter's dream he set her face,

And wrought her body in divinest grace;

He touched the brown hair with a sense of gold,

And in the perfect form He did enfold

What was alone as perfect, the sweet heart;

Knowledge most rare to her He did impart,

And filled with love and worship all her days.

And then God thought Him how it would be well

To give her music, and to Love He said,

"Bring thou some minstrel now that he may tell

How fair and sweet a thing My hands have made."

Then at Love's call I came, bowed down my head,

And at His will my lyre grew audible.

Philip Bourke Marston [1850-1887]

AT THE LAST

Because the shadows deepened verily, -

Because the end of all seemed near, forsooth, -

Her gracious spirit, ever quick to ruth,

Had pity on her bond-slave, even on me.

She came in with the twilight noiselessly,

Fair as a rose, immaculate as Truth;

She leaned above my wrecked and wasted youth;

I felt her presence, which I could not see.

"God keep you, my poor friend," I heard her say;

And then she kissed my dry, hot lips and eyes.

Kiss thou the next kiss, quiet Death, I pray;

Be instant on this hour, and so surprise

My spirit while the vision seems to stay;

Take thou the heart with the heart's Paradise.

Philip Bourke Marston [1850-1887]

TO ONE WHO WOULD MAKE A CONFESSION

On! leave the past to bury its own dead.

The past is naught to us, the present all.

What need of last year's leaves to strew Love's bed?

What need of ghosts to grace a festival?

I would not, if I could, those days recall,

Those days not ours. For us the feast is spread,

The lamps are lit, and music plays withal.

Then let us love and leave the rest unsaid.

This island is our home. Around it roar

Great gulfs and oceans, channels, straits and seas.

What matter in what wreck we reached the shore,

So we both reached it? We can mock at these.

Oh leave the past, if past indeed there be;

I would not know it; I would know but thee.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt [1840-1922]

THE PLEASURES OF LOVE

I do not care for kisses. 'Tis a debt

We paid for the first privilege of love.

These are the rains of April which have wet

Our fallow hearts and forced their germs to move.

Now the green corn has sprouted. Each new day

Brings better pleasures, a more dear surprise,

The blade, the ear, the harvest - and our way

Leads through a region wealthy grown and wise.

We now compare our fortunes. Each his store

Displays to kindred eyes of garnered grain,

Two happy farmers, learned in love's lore,

Who weigh and touch and argue and complain -

Dear endless argument! Yet sometimes we

Even as we argue kiss. There! Let it be.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt [1840-1922]

"WERE BUT MY SPIRIT LOOSED UPON THE AIR"

Were but my spirit loosed upon the air, -

By some High Power who could Life's chains unbind,

Set free to seek what most it longs to find, -

To no proud Court of Kings would I repair:

I would but climb, once more, a narrow stair,

When day was wearing late, and dusk was kind;

And one should greet me to my failings blind,

Content so I but shared his twilight there.

Nay! well I know he waits not as of old, -

I could not find him in the old-time place, -

I must pursue him, made by sorrow bold,

Through worlds unknown, in strange celestial race,

Whose mystic round no traveller has told,

From star to star, until I see his face.

Louise Chandler Moulton [1835-1908]

RENOUNCEMENT

I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,

I shun the thought that lurks in all delight -

The thought of thee - and in the blue heaven's height,

And in the dearest passage of a song.

Oh, just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng

This breast the thought of thee waits, hidden yet bright

But it must never, never come in sight;

I must stop short of thee the whole day long.

But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,

When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,

And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,

Must doff my will as raiment laid away, -

With the first dream that comes with the first sleep

I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.

Alice Meynell [1850-1922]

"MY LOVE FOR THEE"