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;
Lie still and deep,

Sad soul, until the sea-wave washes

The rim o' the sun to-morrow,
In eastern sky.

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
The sound of my name.

Another may woo thee, nearer;

Another may win and wear:
I care not though he be dearer,
If I am remembered there.

Remember me, not as a lover
Whose hope was crossed,

Whose bosom can never recover
The light it hath lost!

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!
Couldst thou smile on me,

I would be the fondest and nearest
That ever loved thee:

But a cloud on my pathway is glooming
That never must burst upon thine;

And heaven, that made thee all blooming,
Ne'er made thee to wither on mine.

Remember me then! O remember
My calm light love!

Though bleak as the blasts of November
My life may prove.

That life will, though lonely, be sweet

If its brightest enjoyment should be
A smile and kind word when we meet,
And a place in thy memory.

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
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds looked sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;

Weeded and worn the ancient thatch

Upon the lonely moated grange.

She only said, "My life is dreary,

He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

Her tears fell with the dews at even;

Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.

After the flitting of the bats,

When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

Upon the middle of the night,

Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The cock sung out an hour ere light:

From the dark fen the oxen's low

Came to her: without hope of change,
In sleep she seemed to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.

She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,

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:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.

She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

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.
But when the moon was very low,

And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell

Upon her bed, across her brow.

She only said, “The night is dreary

He cometh not," she said;

She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

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.
Old faces glimmered through the doors,
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.

She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof

The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then, said she, "I am very dreary,
He will not come," she said;
She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,

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,
With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape;

But O too fond, when have I answered thee?
Ask me no more.

Ask me no more: what answer should I give?
I love not hollow cheek or faded eye:
Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die!
lest I should bid thee live;

Ask me no more,

Ask me no more.