The Home Book of Verse Volume Ii Part 160

"YES"

They stood above the world, In a world apart; And she dropped her happy eyes, And stilled the throbbing pulses Of her happy heart.

And the moonlight fell above her, Her secret to discover; And the moonbeams kissed her hair, As though no human lovers Had laid his kisses there.

"Look up, brown eyes," he said, "And answer mine; Lift up those silken fringes That hide a happy light Almost divine."

The jealous moonlight drifted To the finger half-uplifted, Where shone the opal ring-- Where the colors danced and shifted On the pretty, changeful thing.

Just the old, old story Of light and shade, Love like the opal tender, Like it may be to vary-- May be to fade.

Just the old tender story, Just a glimpse of morning glory In an earthly Paradise, With shadowy reflections In a pair of sweet brown eyes.

Brown eyes a man might well Be proud to win!

Open to hold his image, Shut under silken lashes, Only to shut him in.

O glad eyes, look together, For life's dark, stormy weather Grows to a fairer thing When young eyes look upon it Through a slender wedding ring.

Richard Doddridge Blackmore [1825-1900]

LOVE

All thoughts, all pa.s.sions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame.

Oft in my waking dreams do I Live o'er again that happy hour, When midway on the mount I lay, Beside the ruined tower.

The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene, Had blended with the lights of eve; And she was there, my hope, my joy, My own dear Genevieve!

She leaned against the armed man, The statue of the armed Knight; She stood and listened to my lay, Amid the lingering light.

Few sorrows hath she of her own, My hope! my joy! my Genevieve!

She loves me best whene'er I sing The songs that make her grieve.

I played a soft and doleful air; I sang an old and moving story-- An old rude song, that suited well That ruin wild and h.o.a.ry.

She listened with a flitting blush, With downcast eyes, and modest grace; For well she knew I could not choose But gaze upon her face.

I told her of the Knight that wore Upon his shield a burning brand; And that for ten long years he wooed The Lady of the Land.

I told her how he pined: and ah!

The deep, the low, the pleading tone With which I sang another's love, Interpreted my own.

She listened with a flitting blush, With downcast eyes, and modest grace; And she forgave me, that I gazed Too fondly on her face!

But when I told the cruel scorn That crazed that bold and lovely Knight, And that he crossed the mountain-woods, Nor rested day nor night;

That sometimes from the savage den, And sometimes from the darksome shade, And sometimes starting up at once In green and sunny glade--

There came and looked him in the face An angel beautiful and bright; And that he knew it was a Fiend, This miserable Knight!

And that, unknowing what he did, He leaped amid a murderous band, And saved from outrage worse than death The Lady of the Land;--

And how she wept and clasped his knees; And how she tended him in vain-- And ever strove to expiate The scorn that crazed his brain;--

And that she nursed him in a cave; And how his madness went away, When on the yellow forest-leaves A dying man he lay;--

His dying words--but when I reached That tenderest strain of all the ditty, My faltering voice and pausing harp Disturbed her soul with pity!

All impulses of soul and sense Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve; The music and the doleful tale, The rich and balmy eve;

And hopes, and fears that kindle hope, An undistinguishable throng, And gentle wishes long subdued, Subdued and cherished long!

She wept with pity and delight, She blushed with love and virgin-shame; And like the murmur of a dream, I heard her breathe my name.

Her bosom heaved--she stepped aside, As conscious of my look she stepped-- Then suddenly, with timorous eye She fled to me and wept.

She half enclosed me with her arms, She pressed me with a meek embrace; And bending back her head, looked up, And gazed upon my face.

'Twas partly love, and partly fear, And partly 'twas a bashful art, That I might rather feel, than see, The swelling of her heart.

I calmed her fears, and she was calm, And told her love with virgin pride; And so I won my Genevieve, My bright and beauteous Bride.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834]

NESTED On The Suss.e.x Downs

"Lured," little one? Nay, you've but heard Love o'er your wild downs roaming; Not lured, my bird, my light, swift bird, But homing--homing.

"Caught," does she feel? Nay, no net stirred To catch the heart fore-fated; Not caught, my bird, my bright, wild bird, But mated--mated.

And "caged," she fears? Nay, never that word Of where your brown head rested; Not caged, my bird, my shy, sweet bird, But nested--nested!

Habberton Lulham [18--

THE LETTERS

Still on the tower stood the vane, A black yew gloomed the stagnant air; I peered athwart the chancel pane, And saw the altar cold and bare.

A clog of lead was round my feet, A band of pain across my brow; "Cold altar, heaven and earth shall meet Before you hear my marriage vow."

I turned and hummed a bitter song That mocked the wholesome human heart, And then we met in wrath and wrong, We met, but only meant to part.

Full cold my greeting was and dry; She faintly smiled, she hardly moved; I saw, with half-unconscious eye, She wore the colors I approved.