LOVE LETTERS

My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!
And yet they seem alive and quivering

Against my tremulous hands which loose the string And let them drop down on my knee to-night.

This said, he wished to have me in his sight
Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
To come and touch my hand a simple thing,
Yet I wept for it! this .. the paper's light . .
Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed
As if God's future thundered on my past.
This said, I am thine — and so its ink has paled
With lying at my heart that beat too fast.
And this... O Love, thy words have ill availed
If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

THE SONNET

Scorn not the sonnet; critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camoëns soothed an exile's grief;
The sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow; a glow-worm lamp,

It cheered mild Spenser, called from fairy-land
To struggle through dark ways; and when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains, alas! too few.

William Wordsworth

THE FLIGHT OF LOVE

When the lamp is shatter'd
The light in the dust lies dead
When the cloud is scatter'd,
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,

Sweet tones are remember'd not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.

As music and splendour

Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart's echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute
No song but sad dirges,

Like the wind through a ruin'd cell,
Or the mournful surges

That ring the dead seaman's knell.

When hearts have once mingled,
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singled

To endure what it once possesst.

O Love! who bewailest

The frailty of all things here,

Why choose you the frailest

For your cradle, your home, and your bier?

Its passions will rock thee

As the storms rock the ravens on high;

Bright reason will mock thee

Like the sun from a wintry sky.

From thy nest every rafter

Will rot, and thine eagle home

Leave thee naked to laughter,

When leaves fall and cold winds come.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

SONG

How many times do I love thee, dear?
Tell me how many thoughts there be.
In the atmosphere

Of a new-fall'n year

Whose white and sable hours appear
The latest flake of Eternity:
So many times do I love thee, dear.

How many times do I love again?
Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain

Of evening rain,

Unravell'd from the tumbling main,,

And threading the eye of a yellow star: So many times do I love again.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

THAT HOLY THING

They all were looking for a king
To slay their foes and lift them high:
Thou cam'st, a little baby thing

That made a woman cry.

O Son of Man, to right my lot
Naught but Thy presence can avail;
Yet on the road Thy wheels are not,
Nor on the sea Thy sail!

My how or when Thou wilt not heed,

But come down Thine own secret stair, That Thou mayst answer all my need Yea, every bygone prayer.

George MacDonald

AT BETHLEHEM

Come, we shepherds, whose blest sight
Hath met Love's noon in Nature's night;
Come, lift we up our loftier song,
And wake the Sun that lies too long.

Gloomy night embraced the place

Where the noble Infant lay:

The Babe look'd up, and show'd His face;
In spite of darkness, it was day:

It was Thy day, Sweet! and did rise
Not from the East, but from Thine eyes.

We saw Thee in Thy balmy nest,

Young dawn of our eternal Day;

We saw Thine eyes break from their East,
And chase the trembling shades away:
We saw Thee (and we blest the sight),
We saw Thee by Thine own sweet light.

Welcome, all wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span!

Summer in Winter! Day in Night!

Heaven in Earth! and God in man!

Great Little One, Whose all-embracing birth, Lifts Earth to Heaven, stoops Heaven to Earth.

Richard Crashaw

THE ASPIRATION

How long, great God, how long must I
Immured in this dark prison lie;

Where at the grates and avenues of sense,
My soul must watch to have intelligence;
Where but faint gleams of Thee salute my sight,
Like doubtful moonshine in a cloudy night:
When shall I leave this magic sphere,
And be all mind, all eye, all ear?

How cold this clime! And yet my sense
Perceives e'en here Thy influence.
E'en here Thy strong magnetic charms I feel,
And pant and tremble like the amorous steel.
To lower good, and beauties less divine,
Sometimes my erroneous needle does decline,
But yet, so strong the sympathy,

It turns, and points again to Thee.

I long to see this excellence

Which at such distance strikes my sense. My impatient soul struggles to disengage

Her wings from the confinement of her cage.

Wouldst thou, great Love, this prisoner once set free,
How would she hasten to be link'd to Thee!

She'd for no angels' conduct stay,
But fly, and love-on, all the way.

John Norris