CXCI How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the level of every day's In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. With my lost saints,-I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life !-and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. CXCII THREE KISSES OF FAREWELL THREE, only three, my darling, Separate, solemn, slow; Not like the swift and joyous ones We used to know, When we kissed because we loved each other, Simply to taste love's sweet, And lavished our kisses as the summer Lavishes heat; But as they kiss whose hearts are wrung, When hope and fear are spent, And nothing is left to give, except First of the three, my darling, Is sacred unto pain; We have hurt each other often, We shall again, When we pine because we miss each other, And do not understand How the written words are so much colder Than eye and hand. I kiss thee, dear, for all such pain The second kiss, my darling, We have blessed each other always, We always will. We shall reach until we feel each other Beyond all time and space; We shall listen till we hear each other In every place; The earth is full of messengers, Which love sends to and fro ; I kiss thee, darling, for all joy The last kiss, oh! my darling— What it may be. We may die and never see each other, Die with no time to give Any signs that our hearts are faithful Token of what they will not see AGNES E. GLASE. CXCIII AWAY, delights; go seek some other dwelling, Farewell, false love; thy tongue is ever telling For ever let me rest now from thy smarts; And fire their hearts That have been hard to thee! Mine was not so. Never again deluding love shall know me, And all those griefs that think to over-grow me For ever will I sleep, while poor maids cry, "Alas, for pity, stay, And let us die With thee! Men cannot mock us in the clay." JOHN FLETCHER. CXCIV I NEVER gave a lock of hair away P As girls do, any more; it only may Now shade on two pale cheeks the mark of tears, ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. CXCV THOU didst delight my eyes: Yet who am I? nor first Nor last nor best, that durst Thou shalt set love to rhyme. Thou didst delight my ear: For what wert thou to me? ROBERT Bridges. CXCVI GENIUS IN BEAUTY BEAUTY like hers is genius. Not the call Of Homer's or of Dante's heart sublime,- More gathered gifts exuberant Life bequeaths Than doth this sovereign face, whose love-spell breathes Even from its shadowed contour on the wall. As many men are poets in their youth, But for one sweet-strung soul the wires prolong Even through all change the indomitable song; So in likewise the envenomed years, whose tooth Rends shallower grace with ruin void of ruth, Upon this beauty's power shall wreck no wrong. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. CXCVII FAUSTUS TO THE APPARITION OF HELEN WAS this the face that launched a thousand ships Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. I will be Paris, and for love of thee, Instead of Troy, shall Wertenberg be sacked: |