A Little Book of Old Time Verse Part 5

O Mistress mine, where are you roaming?

O, stay and hear; your true love's coming, That can sing both high and low: Trip no further, pretty sweeting; Journeys end in Lovers' meeting, Every wise man's son doth know.

What is love? 'Tis not hereafter: Present mirth hath present laughter; What's to come is still unsure: In delay there lies no plenty; Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty Youth's a stuff will not endure.

--_Shakespeare_

Thrice toss these oaken ashes in the air, Thrice sit thou mute in this enchanted chair, Then thrice three times tie up this true love's knot, And murmur soft, "She will or she will not."

Go, burn these poisonous weeds in yon blue fire, These screech owls' feathers and this p.r.i.c.kling briar, This cypress gathered at a dead man's grave, That all my fears and cares an end may have.

Then come, you Fairies! dance with me a round!

Melt her hard heart with your melodious sound!

In vain are all the charms I can devise: She hath an art to break them with her eyes.

--_Thomas Campion_

Come, O come, my life's delight!

Let me not in languor pine!

Love loves no delay; thy sight The more enjoyed, the more divine!

O come, and take from me The pain of being deprived of thee!

Thou all sweetness dost enclose, Like a little world of bliss; Beauty guards thy looks, the rose In them pure and eternal is: Come, then, and make thy flight As swift to me as heavenly light!

--_Thomas Campion_

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day.

The tangled vine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seem'd to be The Century's corpse outleant, His crypt the cloudy canopy, The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth Seem'd fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited; An aged thrush, frail, quant, and small, In blast-beruffled plume.

Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carollings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware.

--_Thomas Hardy_

To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of your chaste breast and quiet mind To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field; And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such As you too shall adore; I could not love thee, dear, so much Loved I not honour more!

--_Richard Lovelace_

A j.a.panese Love Song

The young moon is white, But the willows are blue: Your small lips are red, But the great clouds are gray: The waves are so many That whisper to you; But my love is only One flight of spray.

The bright drops are many, The dark wave is one: The dark wave subsides, And the bright sea remains!

And wherever, O singing Maid, you may run, You are one with the world For all your pains.

Tho' the great skies are dark, And your small feet are white, Tho' your wide eyes are blue And the closed poppies red, Tho' the kisses are many, That colour the night, They are linked like pearls On one golden thread.

Were the gray clouds not made For the red of your mouth; The ages for flight Of the b.u.t.terfly years; The sweet of the peach For the pale lips of drouth, The sunlight of smiles For the shadow of tears?

Love, Love is the thread That has pierced them with bliss!

All their hues are but notes In one world-wide tune: Lips, willows and waves, We are one as we kiss, And your face and the flowers Faint away in the moon.

--_Alfred Noyes_

Wishes

Go, little book, and wish to all Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall, A bin of wine, a spice of wit, A house with lawns enclosing it, A living river by the door, A nightingale in the sycamore.

--_Robert Louis Stevenson_

Evanescence

I saw, I saw the lovely child I watch'd her by the way, I learnt her gestures sweet and wild Her loving eyes and gay.

Her name?--I heard not, nay, nor care; Enough it was for me To find her innocently fair And delicately free.

O cease and go ere dreams be done, Nor trace the angel's birth, Nor find the Paradisal one A blossom of the earth!

Thus is it with our subtlest joys,-- How quick the soul's alarm!

How lightly deed or word destroys That evanescent charm!

It comes unbidden, comes unbought, Unfetter'd flees away; His swiftest and his sweetest thought Can never poet say.