Poetical Works of Robert Bridges: Shorter poems. New poems. Notes

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Smith, Elder, 1899

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Page 23 - I WILL not let thee go. Ends all our month-long love in this ? Can it be summed up so, Quit in a single kiss ? I will not let thee go. I will not let thee go. If thy words' breath could scare thy deeds, As the soft south can blow And toss the feathered seeds, Then might I let thee go. I will not let thee go. Had not the great sun seen, I might ; Or were he reckoned slow To bring the false to light, Then might I let thee go.
Page 113 - AWAKE, my heart, to be loved, awake, awake! The darkness silvers away, the morn doth break, It leaps in the sky: unrisen lustres slake The o'ertaken moon. Awake, O heart, awake! She too that loveth awaketh and hopes for thee: Her eyes already have sped the shades that flee, Already they watch the path thy feet shall take: Awake, 0 heart, to be loved, awake, awake!
Page 80 - 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 Upon a liquid sky Trembling to welcome it.
Page 92 - Startling my fancy fond With a chance attitude of the head, a freak of beauty. Thy hand clasps, as 'twas wont, my finger, and holds it: But the grasp is the clasp of Death, heartbreaking and stiff; Yet feels to my hand as if 'Twas still thy will, thy pleasure and trust that enfolds it. So I lay thee there, thy sunken eyelids closing, — Go lie thou there in thy coffin, thy last little bed! — Propping thy wise, sad head, Thy firm, pale hands across thy chest disposing. 20 So quiet! doth the change...
Page 157 - YE thrilled me once, ye mournful strains, Ye anthems of plaintive woe, My spirit was sad when I was young; Ah sorrowful long-ago! But since I have found the beauty of joy I have done with proud dismay: For howsoe'er man hug his care The best of his art is gay.
Page 76 - ... escapes of fitful life ? Shaping the doom that may befall By precedent of terror past : By love dishonoured, and the call Of friendship slighted at the last ? By treasured names, the little store That memory out of wreck could save Of loving hearts, that gone before Call their old comrade to the grave ? O soul, be patient : thou shalt find A little matter mend all this ; Some strain of music to thy mind, Some praise for skill not spent amiss.
Page 241 - MY delight and thy delight Walking, like two angels white, In the gardens of the night : My desire and thy desire Twining to a tongue of fire, Leaping live, and laughing higher; Thro' the everlasting strife In the mystery of life. Love, from whom the world begun, Hath the secret of the sun. Love can tell, and love alone, Whence the million stars were strewn, Why each atom knows its own, How, in spite of woe and death, Gay is life, and sweet is breath : This he taught us, this we knew, Happy in his...
Page 88 - The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air; No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling, And the busy morning cries came thin and spare. Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling...
Page 190 - ... flowers, which in that heavenly air Bloom the year long ! Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams : Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams, A throe of the heart, Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound, No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound, For all our art. Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men We pour our dark nocturnal secret ; and then, As night is withdrawn From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May, Dream, while the innumerable...
Page 46 - O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding, Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West, That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding, Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?

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