Mariana

Not for me marring or making,
Not for me giving or taking;
I love my Love and he loves not me,
I love my Love and my heart is breaking.

Sweet is Spring in its lovely showing,
Sweet the violet veiled in blowing,
Sweet it is to love and be loved;
Ah, sweet knowledge beyond my knowing!

Who sighs for love sighs but for pleasure,
Who wastes for love hoards up a treasure;
Sweet to be loved and take no count,
Sweet it is to love without measure.

Sweet my Love whom I loved to try for,

A Smile and a Sigh

A smile because the nights are short!
And every morning brings such pleasure
Of sweet love-making, harmless sport:
Love that makes and finds its treasure;
Love, treasure without measure.

A sigh because the days are long!
Long long these days that pass in sighing,
A burden saddens every song:
While time lags which should be flying,
We live who would be dying.

The Love of Christ Which Passeth Knowledge

I bore with thee long weary days and nights,
Through many pangs of heart, through many tears;
I bore with thee, thy hardness, coldness, slights,
For three and thirty years.

Who else had dared for thee what I have dared?
I plunged the depth most deep from bliss above;
I not My flesh, I not My spirit spared:
Give thou Me love for love.

For thee I thirsted in the daily drouth,
For thee I trembled in the nightly frost:
Much sweeter thou than honey to My mouth:
Why wilt thou still be lost?

He loved to watch & wake

He loved to watch & wake
When the wing of the southwind whipt the lake
And the glassy surface in ripples brake
And fled in pretty darkness away
Like the flitting boreal lights
Rippling roses in northern nights
Or like the thrill of Aeolian strings
On which the sudden wind-god rings

Not Love, not War, nor the Tumultuous Swell

Not Love, not War, nor the tumultuous swell
Of civil conflict, nor the wrecks of change,
Nor Duty struggling with afflictions strange—
Not these alone inspire the tuneful shell;
But where untroubled peace and concord dwell,
There also is the Muse not loth to range,
Watching the twilight smoke of cot or grange,
Skyward ascending from a woody dell.
Meek aspirations please her, lone endeavour,
And sage content, and placid melancholy;
She loves to gaze upon a crystal river—
Diaphanous because it travels slowly;

Acrostic

Around my lonely hearth, to-night,
Ghostlike the shadows wander:
Now here, now there, a childish sprite,
Earthborn and yet as angel bright,
Seems near me as I ponder.

Gaily she shouts: the laughing air
Echoes her note of gladness —
Or bends herself with earnest care
Round fairy-fortress to prepare
Grim battlement or turret-stair —
In childhood's merry madness!

New raptures still hath youth in store.
Age may but fondly cherish
Half-faded memories of yore —
Up, craven heart! repine no more!

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