Why so dull and mute, young sinner? Will, when speaking well can't win her, Quit, quit, for shame! this will not move, If of herself she will not love, The devil take her! SIR JOHN SUCKLING. THE DISAPPOINTED LOVER. I WILL go back to the great sweet mother, I will go down to her, I and none other, O fair green-girdled mother of mine, Sea, that art clothed with the sun and the rain, Thy sweet hard kisses are strong like wine, Thy large embraces are keen like pain! Save me and hide me with all thy waves, Find me one grave of thy thousand graves, Those pure cold populous graves of thine, Wrought without hand in a world without stain. I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships, Change as the winds change, veer in the tide ; My lips will feast on the foam of thy lips, I shall rise with thy rising, with thee subside; Sleep, and not know if she be, if she were, Filled full with life to the eyes and hair, As a rose is fulfilled to the rose-leaf tips With splendid summer and perfume and pride, This woven raiment of nights and days, A vein in the heart of the streams of the sea. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, WHY SO PALE AND WAN? WHY so pale and wan, fond lover? Prythee, why so pale? Will, when looking well can't move her, Looking ill prevail ? Prythee, why so pale? OUTGROWN. NAY, you wrong her, my friend, she's not fickle ; her love she has simply outgrown : One can read the whole matter, translating her heart by the light of one's own. Can you bear me to talk with you frankly? There | Go measure yourself by her standard. Look back is much that my heart would say ; on the years that have fled ; And you know we were children together, have Then ask, if you need, why she tells you that the quarreled and "made up" in play. And so, for the sake of old friendship, I venture to tell you the truth, As plainly, perhaps, and as bluntly, as I might in our earlier youth. Five summers ago, when you wooed her, you stood on the selfsame plane, Face to face, heart to heart, never dreaming your souls could be parted again. She loved you at that time entirely, in the bloom of her life's early May; And it is not her fault, I repeat it, that she does not love you to-day. Nature never stands still, nor souls either they ever go up or go down ; And hers has been steadily soaring, — but how has it been with your own? She has struggled and yearned and aspired, grown purer and wiser each year : The stars are not farther above you in yon luminous atmosphere ! For she whom you crowned with fresh roses, down yonder, five summers ago, Has learned that the first of our duties to God and ourselves is to grow. Her eyes they are sweeter and calmer; but their vision is clearer as well: Her voice has a tenderer cadence, but is pure as a silver bell. Her face has the look worn by those who with God and his angels have talked : The white robes she wears are less white than the spirits with whom she has walked. And you? Have you aimed at the highest? Have you, too, aspired and prayed? Have you looked upon evil unsullied? Have you conquered it undismayed? Have you, too, grown purer and wiser, as the months and the years have rolled on? Did you meet her this morning rejoicing in the triumph of victory won? Nay, hear me! The truth cannot harm you. When to-day in her presence you stood, Was the hand that you gave her as white and clean as that of her womanhood? love of her girlhood is dead! She cannot look down to her lover: her love like her soul, aspires ; He must stand by her side, or above her, who would kindle its holy fires. Now farewell! For the sake of old friendship I have ventured to tell you the truth, As plainly, perhaps, and as bluntly, as I might in our earlier youth. JULIA C. R. DORR. a look, A something light as air, A breath, a touch like this has shaken! As though its waters ne'er could sever, O you, that have the charge of Love, He sits, with flowerets fettered round; THOMAS MOORE, She laughed, and every heart was glad, She smiled on many just for fun, I knew that there was nothing in it ; I was the first, the only one Her heart had thought of for a minute. I knew it, for she told me so, In phrase which was divinely molded; She wrote a charming hand, - and O, How sweetly all her notes were folded! Our love was like most other loves, A rosebud and a pair of gloves, And "Fly Not Yet," upon the river; Some jealousy of some one's heir, Some hopes of dying broken-hearted; A miniature, a lock of hair, The usual vows, and then we parted. We parted months and years rolled by; Our meeting was all mirth and laughter! There had been many other lodgers ; WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED. ' CHANGES. WHOM first we love, you know, we seldom wed. Much must be borne which it is hard to bear; My little boy begins to babble now But when he sleeps and smiles upon my knee, And I can feel his light breath come and go, I think of one (Heaven help and pity me !) Who loved me, and whom I loved, long ago; Who might have been-ah, what I dare not think! As, rising on its purple wing, The insect-queen of Eastern spring, O'er emerald meadows of Kashmeer, Invites the young pursuer near, And leads him on from flower to flower, A weary chase and wasted hour, Then leaves him, as it soars on high, With panting heart and tearful eye ; So Beauty lures the full-grown child, With hue as bright, and wing as wild; A chase of idle hopes and fears, Begun in folly, closed in tears. If won, to equal ills betrayed, Woe waits the insect and the maid : A life of pain, the loss of peace, From infant's play and man's caprice; The lovely toy, so fiercely sought, Hath lost its charm by being caught; For every touch that wooed its stay Hath brushed its brighest hues away, Till, charm and hue and beauty gone, 'T is left to fly or fall alone. With wounded wing or bleeding breast, Ah! where shall either victim rest? |