Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

LOVE TRIUMPHANT

HELEN'S lips are drifting dust;
Ilion is consumed with rust;
All the galleons of Greece

Drink the ocean's dreamless peace;
Lost was Solomon's purple show
Restless centuries ago;

Stately empires wax and wane-
Babylon, Barbary, and Spain;-
Only one thing, undefaced,

Lasts, though all the worlds lie waste
And the heavens are overturned.
-Dear, how long ago we learned!

There's a sight that blinds the sun,
Sound that lives when sounds are done,
Music that rebukes the birds,

Language lovelier than words,

Hue and scent that shame the rose,

Wine no earthly vineyard knows,
Silence stiller than the shore
Swept by Charon's stealthy oar,
Ocean more divinely free

Than Pacific's boundless sea,

Ye who love have learned it true.

-Dear, how long ago we knew!

Frederic Lawrence Knowles [1869-1905]

LINES

LOVE within the lover's breast

Burns like Hesper in the West,
O'er the ashes of the sun,

Till the day and night are done;

Then, when dawn drives up his car—

Lo! it is the morning star.

Love! thy love pours down on mine,

As the sunlight on the vine,

As the snow rill on the vale,
As the salt breeze on the sail;
As the song unto the bird
On my lips thy name is heard.

As a dewdrop on the rose
In thy heart my passion glows;
As a skylark to the sky,
Up into thy breast I fly;

As a sea-shell of the sea

Ever shall I sing of thee.

George Meredith [1828-1909]

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS

WHERE the quiet-colored end of evening smiles
Miles and miles

On the solitary pastures where our sheep

Half-asleep

Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop As they crop

Was the site once of a city great and gay,

(So they say)

Of our country's very capital, its prince

Ages since

Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
Peace or war.

Now, the country does not even boast a tree,
As you see,

To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
From the hills

Intersect and give a name to (else they run
Into one),

Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires
Up like fires

O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall

Bounding all,

Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed, Twelve abreast.

Love Among the Ruins

II21

And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass

Never was!

Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'erspreads
And embeds

Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,
Stock or stone-

Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
Long ago;

Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
Struck them tame;

And that glory and that shame alike, the gold
Bought and sold.

Now, the single little turret that remains
On the plains,

By the caper overrooted, by the gourd

Overscored,

While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks
Through the chinks-

Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time

Sprang sublime,

And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced
As they raced,

And the monarch and his minions and his dames
Viewed the games.

And I know, while thus the quiet-colored eve
Smiles to leave

To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece
In such peace,

And the slopes and rills in undistinguished gray
Melt away-

That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair

Waits me there

In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul

For the goal,

When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb,

Till I come.

But he looked upon the city, every side,

Far and wide,

All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades'

Colonnades,

All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,-and then,
All the men!

When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
Either hand

On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
Of my face,

Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
Each on each.

In one year they sent a million fighters forth
South and North,

And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
As the sky,

Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force-
Gold, of course.

Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!
Earth's returns

For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!

Shut them in,

With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!

Love is best!

Robert Browning [1812-1889]

EARL MERTOUN'S SONG

From "The Blot in the 'Scutcheon"

THERE'S a woman like a dewdrop, she's so purer than the purest;

And her noble heart's the noblest, yes, and her sure faith's

the surest:

And her eyes are dark and humid, like the depth on depth of luster

Hid i' the harebell, while her tresses, sunnier than the wildgrape cluster,

Gush in golden-tinted plenty down her neck's rose-misted marble:

Then her voice's music . . . call it the well's bubbling, the

bird's warble!

Parting at Morning

1123

And this woman says, "My days were sunless and my nights

were moonless,

Parched the pleasant April herbage, and the lark's heart's outbreak tuneless,

If you loved me not!" And I who (ah, for words of flame!) adore her,

Who am mad to lay my spirit prostrate palpably before her

I may enter at her portal soon, as now her lattice takes

me,

And by noontide as by midnight make her mine, as hers she

makes me!

Robert Browning [1812-1889]

MEETING AT NIGHT

THE gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed in the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spirt of a lighted match,

And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

Robert Browning [1812–1889]

PARTING AT MORNING

ROUND the cape of a sudden came the sea,
And the sun looked over the mountain's rim:
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.

Robert Browning [1812-1889]

« FöregåendeFortsätt »