Oh you, for whom I write! whose hearts can melt
At the soft thrilling voice whose power you prove,
You know what charm, unutterably felt,
Attends the unexpected voice of Love!
Above the lyre, the lute's soft notes above,
With sweet enchantment to the soul it steals,
And bears it to Elysium's happy grove;
You best can tell the raptures Psyche feels
When love's ambrosial lip the vows of Hymen
seals.
Mrs. Tighe's Psyche.
Oh! have you never known the silent charm
That undisturb'd retirement yields the soul,
Where no intruder might your peace alarm,
And tenderness have wept without control,
While melting fondness o'er the bosom stole?
Did fancy never, in some lonely grove,
Abridge the hours which must in absence roll!
Those pensive pleasures did you never prove,
Oh, you have never lov'd! You know not what is
Mrs. Tighe's Psyche.
love!
Man may despoil his brother man of all
That's great or glittering-kingdoms fall-hosts

yield

Yes, love indeed is light from heaven,
A spark of that immortal fire
With angels shar'd, by Alla given,
To lift from earth our low desire.

Friends fail- slaves fly- and all betray, and, Devotion wafts the mind above,

That loves without self-love! 'Tis here! now
prove it.
Byron's Sardanapalus.

But heaven itself descends in love;
A feeling from the god-head caught,
To wean from self each sordid thought;
A ray

of him who form'd the whole :

Peace! I have sought it where it should be found, A glory circling round the soul!

In love with love too - which perhaps deserv'd

it;

And, in its stead, a heaviness of heart-
A weakness of the spirit-listless days,
And nights inexorable to sweet sleep,
Have come upon me.

Byron's Heaven and Earth.

Alas' what else is love but sorrow? Even
He who made the earth and love, had soon to grieve
Above its first and best inhabitants.

Byron's Heaven and Earth.

My Adah! let me call thee mine, Albeit thou art not: 't is a word I cannot

Part with, although I must from thee.

Byron's Giacur.

To love the softest hearts are prone,
But such can ne'er be all his own;
Too timid in his woes to share,

Byron's Heaven and Earth, Too meek to meet, or brave despair:

Let none think to fly the danger,

For soon or late love is his own avenger.

Byron.

And sterner hearts alone can feel
The wound that time can never heal.
Byron's Gicour

And he was mourn'd by one whose quiet grief, Less loud, outlasts a people's for their chief. Vain was all question ask'd her of the past, And vain e'en menace- - silent to the last; She told nor whence nor why she left behind Byron's Giaour. Her all for one who seem'd but little kind.

Mrs. E. O. Smith's Poems. And true love has an eye for a dinner,

320

LOVERS.

Thus warred he long time against his will,
Till that through weakness he was forc'd at last
To yield himself unto the mighty ill,
Which as a victor proud gan ransack fast
His inward parts, and all his entrails wast,
That neither blood in face, nor life in heart,
It left, but both did quite dry up and blast,
As piercing leven, which the inner part
Of every thing consumes, and calcineth by art.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.

She greatly gan enamoured to wax,
And with vain thoughts her falsed fancy vex:
Her fickle heart conceived hasty fire,
Like sparks of fire that fall in slender flex,
That shortly burnt into extreme desire,
And ransack'd all her veins with passion entire.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.
Sad, sour, and full of fancies frail
She grew, yet wist she neither how nor why;
She wist not (silly maid) what she did aile,
Yet wist she was not well at ease perdy,
Yet thought it was not love but some melancholy.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.
Nor aught it mote the noble maid avail,
Nor slake the fury of her cruel flame,
But that she still did waste, and still did wait,
That through long languor, and heart burning
brame,

She shortly like a pined ghost became.

Spenser's Fairy Queen.
The gnawing envy, the heart fretting fear,
The vain surmises, the distrustful shows,
The false reports that flying tales do bear,
The doubts, the dangers, the delays, the woes,
The feigned friends, the unassured foes,
With thousands more than any tongue can tell,
Do make a lover's life a witch's hell.

Spenser's Hymn in honour of Love.
The rolling wheel, that runneth often round,
The hardest steel in tract of time doth tear;
And drizzling drops, that often do redound,
Firmest flint doth in continuance wear:
Yet cannot I, with many a dropping tear,
And long entreaty, soften her hard heart,
That she will once vouchsafe my plaint to hear,
Or look with pity on my painful smart:
But when I plead, she bids me play my part;
And when I weep, she says tears are but water;
And when I sigh, she says I know the art;
And when I wail, she turns herself to laughter;
So do I weep and wail, and plead in vain,
While she as steel and flint doth still remain.

Spenser.

Humbled with fear and awful reverence,
Before the footstool of his majesty,
Throw thyself down, with trembling innocence,
Nor dare look up with corruptible eye
On the dread face of that great deity,
For fear, lest if he chance to look on thee,
Thou turn to nought, and quite confounded be.
Spenser

Lovers' eyes more sharply sighted be
Than other men's, and in dear love's delight
See more than any other eyes can see.

Spenser
Lovers and madmen have such soothing brains,
Such sharp fantasies, that they apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.

Shaks. Midsummer Night's Dream
Such as I am, all true lovers are;
Unstaid and skittish in all motions else,
Save, in the constant image of the creature
That is belov'd.

Shaks. Twelfth Night

Now it is about the very hour
That Silvia, at friar Patrick's cell, should meet me
She will not fail; for lovers break not hours,
Unless it be to come before their time;
So much they spur their expedition.

Shaks. Two Gentlemen of Vers

Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
Pr'ythee why so pale?
Will, when looking well can't move her,
Looking ill prevail ?
Pr'ythee why so pale?
Quit, quit, for shame! this will not move,
This cannot take her;

If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her:-
The devil take her.

Sir John Suckling