but
fairer we it deem For that sweet odour which doth in it live. The canker-blooms
have full as deep a dye As the perfumed tincture of the roses, Hang on
such thorns, and play as wantonly When summer's breath their masked buds
discloses; But for their virtue only is their show, They lived unwoo'd,
and unrespected fade; Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so: Of their
sweet deaths are sweetest odours made. And so of you, beauteous and lovely
youth, When that shall fade, by verse distills your truth."
Come to me in the silence of the night; Come in the speaking silence of a dream; Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise, Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet; Where thirsting longing eyes Watch the slow door That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live My very life again though cold in death: Come back to me in dreams, that I may give Pulse for pulse, breath for breath: Speak low, lean low, As long ago, my love, how long ago."
"Piled deep below the screening apple-branch They lie with bitter apples in their hands: And some are only ancient bones that blanch, And some had ships that last year's
wind
did launch, And some were yesterday the lords of lands.
In the soft dell, amond the apple-trees, High up above the hidden pit she stands, And there for ever sings, who gave to these, That lie below, her magic hour of ease, And those her apples holden in their hands.
This in my dreams is shown me; and her hair crosses my lips and draws my burning breath; Her song spreads golden wings upon the air, Life's eyes are gleaming from her forehead fair, And from her breasts the ravishing eyes of Death.
Yet I know never but this dream alone: There, from a dried-up channel, once the stream's, The glen slopes up; even such in sleep it seems As to my waking sight the place well known.
My love I called her, and she loves me well: But I love her as in the maelstrom's cup The whirled stone loves the leaf inseparable That clings to it round all the circling swell, And that the same last eddy swallows up."
---Samuel Taylor Coleridge---
"All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
I have heard of reasons manifold
Why Love must needs be blind,
But this the best of all I hold,--
His eyes are in his mind
What outward form and feature are
He guesseth but in part;
But what within is good and fair
He seeth with the heart."
