romantic poems

PRELUDES

I

Honour and Desert

O Queen, awake to thy renown,
Require what 'tis our wealth to give,
And comprehend and wear the crown
Of thy despised prerogative!
I who in manhood's name at length
With glad songs come to abdicate
The gross regality of strength,
Must yet in this thy praise abate,
That, through thine erring humbleness

PRELUDES

I

The Changed Allegiance

Watch how a bird, that captived sings,
The cage set open, first looks out,
Yet fears the freedom of his wings,
And now withdraws, and flits about,
And now looks forth again; until,
Grown bold, he hops on stool and chair,
And now attains the window-sill,
And now confides himself to air.
The maiden so, from love's free sky

Preludes

I

Perfect Love Rare

Most rare is still most noble found,
Most noble still most incomplete;
Sad law, which leaves King Love uncrown'd
In this obscure, terrestrial seat!
With bale more sweet than others' bliss,
And bliss more wise than others' bale,
The secrets of the world are his,
And freedom without let or pale.

PRELUDES

I

The Comparison

Where she succeeds with cloudless brow,
In common and in holy course,
He fails, in spite of prayer and vow
And agonies of faith and force:
Or, if his suit with Heaven prevails
To righteous life, his virtuous deeds
Lack beauty, virtue's badge; she fails
More graciously than he succeeds.

A crown, a crown for Love's bright head,
Without whose happy wit
All form and beauty had been dead,
And we had died with it.

For what are all the graces
Without good forms and faces?
Then, Love, receive the Due reward
Those Graces have prepared.
CHORUS

And may no hand, no tongue, no eye,
Thy merit, or their thanks envy.
(from Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly)

Gentle Love, be not dismayed.
See the muses, pure and holy,
By their priests have sent thee aid
Against this brood of folly.
It is true that Sphinx, their dame,
Had the sense first from the muses,
Which in uttering she doth lame,
Perplexeth, and abuses.
But they bid that thou should'st look
In the brightest face here shining,
And the same, as would a book,
Shall help thee in divining.
(from Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly)

If all these Cupids now were blind,
As is their wanton brother,
Or pLay should put it in their mind
To shoot at one another,

What pretty battle they would make
If they their objects should mistake,
And each one wound his mother!

It was no polity of court,
Albe the place were charmed,
To let, in earnest or in sport,
So many Loves in armed;
For say the dames should, with their eyes,
Upon the hearts here mean surprise,
Were not the men like harmed?

Yes, were the Loves or false or straying,

So beauty on the waters stood
When Love had severed earth from flood!
So when he parted air from fire,
He did with concord all inspire!
And then a motion he them taught
That eLder than himself was thought,
Which thought was, yet, the child of earth,
For Love is eLder than his birth.
(from The Masque of Beauty)

When Love at first did move
From out of Chaos, brightened
So was the world, and lightened
As now!
1 ECHO As now!
2 ECHO As now!
Yield, night, then, to the light,
As blackness hath to beauty,
Which is but the same duty.
It was for Beauty that the world was made,
And where she reigns, Love's lights admit no shade.
1 ECHO Love's lights admit no shade.
2 ECHO Admit no shade.
(from The Masque of Beauty)

First printed in Blackwood's Magazine , October, 1846.

I

She has laughed as softly as if she sighed,
She has counted six, and over,
Of a purse well filled and a heart well tried —
Oh, each a worthy lover!
They " give her time;" for her soul must slip
Where the world has set the grooving;
She will lie to none with her fair red lip:
But love seeks truer loving.

II

She trembles her fan in a sweetness dumb,