IF thou wilt ease thine heart Of love, and all its smart, Then sleep, dear, sleep; And not a sorrow Hang any tear on your eye-lashes; Sad soul, until the sea-wave washes The rim o' the sun to-morrow, But wilt thou cure thine heart Of love, and all its smart, Then die, dear, die; 'Tis deeper, sweeter, Than on a rose bank to lie dreaming With folded eye; And then alone, amid the beaming Of love's stars, thou'lt meet her In eastern sky. Thomas Lovell Beddoes [1803-1849] "A PLACE IN THY MEMORY" A PLACE in thy memory, Dearest! Is all that I claim: To pause and look back when thou hearest Another may woo thee, nearer; Another may win and wear: Remember me, not as a lover Whose bosom can never recover As the young bride remembers the mother She loves, though she never may see, As a sister remembers a brother, O Dearest, remember me! Could I be thy true lover, Dearest! I would be the fondest and nearest But a cloud on my pathway is glooming And heaven, that made thee all blooming, Remember me then! O remember Though bleak as the blasts of November That life will, though lonely, be sweet If its brightest enjoyment should be Gerald Griffin [1803-1840] INCLUSIONS Он, wilt thou have my hand, Dear, to lie along in thine? As a little stone in a running stream, it seems to lie and pine. Now drop the poor pale hand, Dear, unfit to plight with thine. Oh, wilt thou have my cheek, Dear, drawn closer to thine own? My cheek is white, my check is worn, by many a tear run down. Now leave a little space, Dear, lest it should wet thine own. Oh, must thou have my soul, Dear, commingled with thy soul?— Red grows the cheek, and warm the hand; the part is in the whole; Nor hands nor cheeks keep separate, when soul is joined to soul. Elizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861] MARIANA Mariana in the moated grange.—Measure for Measure WITH blackest moss the flower-plots Weeded and worn the ancient thatch Upon the lonely moated grange. She only said, "My life is dreary, He cometh not," she said; Her tears fell with the dews at even; Her tears fell ere the dews were dried; After the flitting of the bats, When thickest dark did trance the sky, Upon the middle of the night, Waking she heard the night-fowl crow: From the dark fen the oxen's low Came to her: without hope of change, She only said, "The day is dreary, I would that I were dead!" About a stone-cast from the wall A sluice with blackened waters slept, And o'er it many, round and small, The clustered marish-mosses crept. Hard by a poplar shook alway, All silver-green with gnarlèd bark: She only said, "My life is dreary, And ever when the moon was low, And the shrill winds were up and away, In the white curtain, to and fro, She saw the gusty shadow sway. And wild winds bound within their cell, Upon her bed, across her brow. She only said, “The night is dreary He cometh not," she said; She said, "I am aweary, aweary, All day within the dreamy house, The doors upon their hinges creaked; The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse Behind the moldering wainscot shrieked, "Ask Me No More" Or from the crevice peered about. She only said, "My life is dreary, The sparrow's chirrup on the roof, The poplar made, did all confound O God, that I were dead!" 855 Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] "ASK ME NO MORE" From "The Princess" Ask me no more: the moon may draw the sea; The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shape, But O too fond, when have I answered thee? Ask me no more: what answer should I give? Ask me no more, Ask me no more. |