For while thus it pouts, her fingers wrestle,
Twinkling the audacious leaves between,
Till round they turn and down they nestle
Is not the dear mark still to be seen?

Where I find her not, beauties vanish;
Whither I follow her, beauties flee;

Is there no method to tell her in Spanish

June 's twice June since she breathed it with me? Come, bud, show me the least of her traces,

Treasure my lady's lightest footfall
Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces-
Roses, you are not so fair after all.

ROBERT BROWNING.

TRUE LOVE.

LET me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

WILLIAM SHAKSPERE,

THE BROOK-SIDE.

87

I

THE BROOK-SIDE.

WANDERED by the brook-side,
I wandered by the mill;

I could not hear the brook flow

The noisy wheel was still.
There was no burr of grasshopper,
No chirp of any bird,

But the beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.

I sat beneath the elm-tree:

I watched the long, long shade,
And, as it grew still longer,
I did not feel afraid;
For I listened for a footfall,
I listened for a word -

But the beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.

The evening wind passed by my cheek,

The leaves above were stirred

But the beating of my own heart

Was all the sound I heard.

Fast silent tears were flowing,
When something stood behind;
A hand was on my shoulder-

I knew its touch was kind;
It drew me nearer - nearer

We did not speak one word,
For the beating of our own hearts
Was all the sound we heard.

RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES.

LOVE'S JUSTIFICATION.

T must be right sometimes to entertain

IT

Chaste love with hope not over-credulous : Since if all human loves were impious, Unto what end did God the world ordain? If I love thee and bend beneath thy reign, 'Tis for the sake of beauty glorious Which in thine eyes divine is stored for us, And drives all evil thought from its domain. That is not love whose tyranny we own

In loveliness that every moment dies; Which, like the face it worships, fades away: True love is that which the pure heart hath known, Which alters not with time or death's decay,

Yielding on earth earnest of Paradise.

MICHAEL ANGELO.

THE LOVER's night THOUGHTS. 89

WHAT

A FOREBODING.

'HAT were the whole void world, if thou wert dead,

Whose briefest absence can eclipse my day,

And make the hours that danced with Time away
Drag their funereal steps with muffled tread?
Through thee, meseems, the very rose is red,
From thee draw life all things that grow not gray,
And by thy force the happy stars are sped.
Thou near, the hope of thee to overflow

Fills all my earth and heaven, and when in Spring,
Ere April come, the birds and blossoms know,
And grasses brighten round her feet to cling;
Nay, and this hope delights all nature so
That the dumb turf I tread on seems to sing.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

THE LOVER'S NIGHT THOUGHTS.

WEARY

with toil, I haste me to my bed,

The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;

But then begins a journey in my head,

To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,

And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see:
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,

Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,

Makes black night beauteous and her old face new. Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,

For thee and for myself no quiet find.

WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

NIGHT THOUGHTS.

"TIS sweeter than all else below,

The daylight and its duties done,
To fold the arms for rest, and so
Relinquish all regards but one;
To see her features in the dark;

To lie and meditate once more,
Some grace he did not fully mark,

Some tone he had not heard before;
Then from beneath his head to take

Her notes, her picture, and her glove,
Put there for joy when he shall wake,
And press them to the heart of love;
And then to whisper "Wife," and pray
To live so long as not to miss
That unimaginable day

Which farther seems the nearer 't is;
And still from joy's unfathomed well
To drink, in sleep, while, on her brow
Of innocence ineffable,

The laughing bridal roses blow.

COVENTRY PATMORE.