Never believe, though in my nature reigned All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood, That it could so preposterously be stained To leave for nothing all thy sum of good!

For nothing this wide universe I call, Save thou, my rose: in it thou art my all.

CXVI 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 compa.s.s 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.

Cx.x.x My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her b.r.e.a.s.t.s are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak,--yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a G.o.ddess go,-- My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.

CXLVI Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, Pressed by these rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?

Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?

Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; Within be fed, without be rich no more: So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men; And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.

William Shakespeare [1564-1616]

"ALEXIS, HERE SHE STAYED"

Alexis, here she stayed; among these pines, Sweet hermitress, she did alone repair; Here did she spread the treasure of her hair, More rich than that brought from the Colchian mines.

She set her by these musked eglantines, The happy place the print seems yet to bear; Her voice did sweeten here thy sugared lines, To which winds, trees, beasts, birds, did lend their ear.

Me here she first perceived, and here a morn Of bright carnations did o'erspread her face; Here did she sigh, here first my hopes were born, And I first got a pledge of promised grace: But, ah! what served it to be happy so, Since pa.s.sed pleasures double but new woe?

William Drummond [1585-1649]

"WERE I AS BASE AS IS THE LOWLY PLAIN"

Were I as base as is the lowly plain, And you, my love, as high as heaven above, Yet should the thoughts of me, your humble swain, Ascend to heaven in honor of my love.

Were I as high as heaven above the plain, And you, my love, as humble and as low As are the deepest bottoms of the main, Wheresoe'er you were, with you my love should go.

Were you the earth, dear love, and I the skies, My love should shine on you, like to the sun, And look upon you with ten thousand eyes, Till heaven waxed blind and till the world were done.

Wheresoe'er I am,--below, or else above you,-- Wheresoe'er you are, my heart shall truly love you.

Joshua Sylvester [1563-1618]

A SONNET OF THE MOON

Look how the pale Queen of the silent night Doth cause the ocean to attend upon her, And he, as long as she is in his sight, With his full tide is ready her to honor: But when the silver wagon of the Moon Is mounted up so high he cannot follow, The sea calls home his crystal waves to moan, And with low ebb doth manifest his sorrow.

So you that are the sovereign of my heart, Have all my joys attending on your will, My joys low-ebbing when you do depart, When you return, their tide my heart doth fill.

So as you come, and as you do depart, Joys ebb and flow within my tender heart.

Charles Best [fl. 1602]

TO MARY UNWIN

Mary! I want a lyre with other strings, Such aid from Heaven as some have feigned they drew, An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new And undebased by praise of meaner things; That, ere through age or woe I shed my wings, I may record thy worth with honor due, In verse as musical as thou art true, And that immortalizes whom it sings: But thou hast little need. There is a Book By seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light, On which the eyes of G.o.d not rarely look, A chronicle of actions just and bright: There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary, shine; And, since thou own'st that praise, I spare thee mine.

William Cowper [1731-1800]

"WHY ART THOU SILENT"

Why art thou silent? Is thy love a plant Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air Of absence withers what was once so fair?

Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant?

Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant, Bound to thy service with unceasing care-- The mind's least generous wish a mendicant For naught but what thy happiness could spare.

Speak!--though this soft warm heart, once free to hold A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine, Be left more desolate, more dreary cold Than a forsaken bird's-nest filled with snow 'Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine-- Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know!

William Wordsworth [1770-1850]

SONNETS From "The House of Life"

IV LOVESIGHT When do I see thee most, beloved one?

When in the light the spirits of mine eyes Before thy face, their altar, solemnize The worship of that Love through thee made known?

Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,) Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies, And my soul only sees thy soul its own?

O love, my love! if I no more should see Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee, Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,-- How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope, The wind of Death's imperishable wing?

V HEART'S HOPE By what word's power, the key of paths untrod, Shall I the difficult deeps of Love explore, Till parted waves of Song yield up the sh.o.r.e Even as that sea which Israel crossed dryshod?

For lo! in some poor rhythmic period, Lady, I fain would tell how evermore Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor Thee from myself, neither our love from G.o.d.

Yea, in G.o.d's name, and Love's, and thine, would I Draw from one loving heart such evidence As to all hearts all things shall signify; Tender as dawn's first lull-fire, and intense As instantaneous penetrating sense, In Spring's birth-hour, of other Springs gone by.

XV THE BIRTH-BOND Have you not noted, in some family Where two were born of a first marriage-bed, How still they own their gracious bond, though fed And nursed on the forgotten breast and knee?-- How to their father's children they shall be In act and thought of one goodwill; but each Shall for the other have, in silence speech, And in a word complete community?

Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love, That among souls allied to mine was yet One nearer kindred than life hinted of.

O born with me somewhere that men forget, And though in years of sight and sound unmet, Known for my soul's birth-partner well enough!

XIX SILENT NOON Your hands lie open in the long fresh gra.s.s,-- The finger-points look through like rosy blooms: Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms 'Neath billowing skies that scatter and ama.s.s.

All round our nest, far as the eye can pa.s.s, Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.

'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-gla.s.s.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:-- So this winged hour is dropped to us from above.

Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower, This close-companioned inarticulate hour When twofold silence was the song of love.

XXVI MID-RAPTURE Thou lovely and beloved, thou my love; Whose kiss seems still the first; whose summoning eyes, Even now, as for our love-world's new sunrise, Shed very dawn; whose voice, attuned above All modulation of the deep-bowered dove, Is like a hand laid softly on the soul; Whose hand is like a sweet voice to control Those worn tired brows it hath the keeping of:-- What word can answer to thy word,--what gaze To thine, which now absorbs within its sphere My worshipping face, till I am mirrored there Light-circled in a heaven of deep-drawn rays?

What clasp, what kiss mine inmost heart can prove, O lovely and beloved, O my love?

x.x.xI HER GIFTS High grace, the dower of queens; and therewithal Some wood-born wonder's sweet simplicity; A glance like water br.i.m.m.i.n.g with the sky Or hyacinth-light where forest-shadows fall; Such thrilling pallor of cheek as doth enthrall The heart; a mouth whose pa.s.sionate forms imply All music and all silence held thereby; Deep golden locks, her sovereign coronal; A round reared neck, meet column of Love's shrine To cling to when the heart takes sanctuary; Hands which for ever at Love's bidding be, And soft-stirred feet still answering to his sign:-- These are her gifts, as tongue may tell them o'er.