For while thus it pouts, her fingers wrestle, Where I find her not, beauties vanish; Is there no method to tell her in Spanish June 's twice June since she breathed it with me? Come, bud, show me the least of her traces, Treasure my lady's lightest footfall ROBERT BROWNING. TRUE LOVE. 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. WILLIAM SHAKSPERE, THE BROOK-SIDE. 87 I THE BROOK-SIDE. WANDERED by the brook-side, I could not hear the brook flow The noisy wheel was still. But the beating of my own heart I sat beneath the elm-tree: I watched the long, long shade, But the beating of my own heart The evening wind passed by my cheek, The leaves above were stirred But the beating of my own heart Was all the sound I heard. Fast silent tears were flowing, I knew its touch was kind; We did not speak one word, RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. LOVE'S JUSTIFICATION. T must be right sometimes to entertain IT Chaste love with hope not over-credulous : Since if all human loves were impious, Unto what end did God the world ordain? If I love thee and bend beneath thy reign, 'Tis for the sake of beauty glorious Which in thine eyes divine is stored for us, And drives all evil thought from its domain. That is not love whose tyranny we own In loveliness that every moment dies; Which, like the face it worships, fades away: True love is that which the pure heart hath known, Which alters not with time or death's decay, Yielding on earth earnest of Paradise. MICHAEL ANGELO. THE LOVER's night THOUGHTS. 89 WHAT A FOREBODING. 'HAT were the whole void world, if thou wert dead, Whose briefest absence can eclipse my day, And make the hours that danced with Time away Fills all my earth and heaven, and when in Spring, JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. THE LOVER'S NIGHT THOUGHTS. WEARY with toil, I haste me to my bed, The dear repose for limbs with travel tired; But then begins a journey in my head, To work my mind, when body's work's expired: And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night, Makes black night beauteous and her old face new. Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind, For thee and for myself no quiet find. WILLIAM SHAKSPERE NIGHT THOUGHTS. "TIS sweeter than all else below, The daylight and its duties done, To lie and meditate once more, Some tone he had not heard before; Her notes, her picture, and her glove, Which farther seems the nearer 't is; The laughing bridal roses blow. COVENTRY PATMORE. |