LOVE IN FOUR CENTURIES.
Reading edition
A Collection of Verses Which Prove That However Great May Be the Changes Wrought By Time on Other Products of Human Endeavor, the Art of Expressing the “Grande Passion” Remains Immutable.
SWEET-AND-TWENTY.
By William Shakespeare (1564–1616).
Oh, mistress mine, where are you roaming?
Oh, stay and hear; your true love’s coming,
That can sing both high and low;
Trip no farther, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lover’s meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.
What is love? ’tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, Sweet-and-Twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.
✷ ✷ ✷ ✷
GO, LOVELY ROSE.
By Edmund Waller (1605–1687).
Go, lovely Rose—
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
Tell her that’s young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.
Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired:
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.
Then die—that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!
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I PRITHEE SEND ME BACK MY HEART.
By Sir John Suckling (1609–1642).
I prithee send me back my heart,
Since I cannot have thine,
For if from yours you will not part,
Why, then, shouldst thou have mine?
Yet now I think on’t, let it lie;
To find it were in vain;
For thou’st a thief in either eye
Would steal it back again.
Why should two hearts in one breast lie,
And yet not lodge together?
O Love! where is thy sympathy,
If thus our breasts thou sever?
But love is such a mystery,
I cannot find it out;
For when I think I’m best resolved,
I then am in most doubt.
Then farewell care, and farewell wo,
I will no longer pine;
For I’ll believe I have her heart,
As much as she has mine.
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TO LUCASTA, ON GOING TO THE WARS.
By Richard Lovelace (1618–1658).
Tell me not, sweet, I am unkinde,
That from the nunnerie
Of thy chaste breast and quiet minde,
To warre and armes I flee.
True, a new mistress now I chase—
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith imbrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.
Yet this inconstancy is such
As you, too, should adore;
I could not love thee, deare, so much,
Loved I not honor more.
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TO LADY ANNE HAMILTON.
By William Robert Spencer (1769–1834).
Too late I stay’d—forgive the crime!
Unheeded flew the hours;
How noiseless falls the foot of Time
That only treads on flowers!
What eye with clear account remarks
The ebbing of the glass,
When all its sands are diamond sparks,
That dazzle as they pass?
Oh, who to sober measurement
Time’s happy swiftness brings,
When birds of paradise have lent
Their plumage for his wings?
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NOT OURS THE VOWS.
By Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866).
Not ours the vows of such as plight
Their troth in sunny weather,
While leaves are green and skies are bright,
To walk on flowers together.
But we have loved as those who tread
The thorny path of sorrow,
With clouds above, and cause to dread
Yet deeper gloom to-morrow.
That thorny path, those stormy skies,
Have drawn our spirits nearer,
And rendered us, by sorrow’s ties,
Each to the other dearer.
Love, born in hours of joy and mirth,
With mirth and joy may perish;
That to which darker hours gave birth
Still more and more we cherish.
It looks beyond the clouds of time,
And through death’s shadowy portal,
Made by adversity sublime,
By faith and hope immortal.
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THE GRAVE OF LOVE.
By Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866).
I dug, beneath the cypress shade,
What well might seem an elfin’s grave;
And every pledge in earth I laid,
That erst thy false affection gave.
I pressed them down the sod beneath;
I placed one mossy stone above;
And twined the rose’s fading wreath
Around the sepulcher of love.
Frail as thy love, the flowers were dead,
Ere yet the evening sun was set;
But years shall see the cypress spread,
Immutable as my regret.
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MUSIC, WHEN SOFT VOICES DIE.
By Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822).
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odors, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose-leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap’d for the beloved’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
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WHEN STARS ARE IN THE QUIET SKIES.
By Bulwer Lytton (1803–1873).
When stars are in the quiet skies,
Then most I pine for thee;
Bend on me then thy tender eyes,
As stars look on the sea!
For thoughts, like waves that glide by night,
Are stillest when they shine;
Mine earthly love lies hushed in light
Beneath the heaven of thine.
There is an hour when angels keep
Familiar watch o’er men,
When coarser souls are wrapped sleep—
Sweet spirit, meet me then!
There is an hour when holy dreams
Through slumber fairest glide;
And in that mystic hour it seems
Thou shouldst be by my side.
My thoughts of thee too sacred are
For daylight’s common beam:
I can but know thee as my star,
My angel, and my dream;
When stars are in the quiet skies,
Then most I pine for thee;
Bend on me then thy tender eyes,
As stars look on the sea!
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TO HELEN.
By Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849).
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicæan barks of yore,
That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.
Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand!
The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!