A Match 641 I looked and saw your love in the shadow of your heart, SINCE WE PARTED SINCE we parted yester eve, I do love thee, love, believe, Twelve times dearer, twelve hours longer,— One sun surer,thus much more Than I loved thee, love, before. Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton [1831-1891] A MATCH IF love were what the rose is, Green pleasure or gray grief; If I were what the words are, And love were like the tune, That get sweet rain at noon; If you were life, my darling, And I your love were death, Ere March made sweet the weather With daffodil and starling And hours of fruitful breath; If you were thrall to sorrow, And laughs of maid and boy; 1 If you were April's lady, We'd throw with leaves for hours And night were bright like day; If you were April's lady, And I were lord in May. If you were queen of pleasure, And find his mouth a rein; Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909] A BALLAD OF LIFE I FOUND in dreams a place of wind and flowers, A lady clothed like summer with sweet hours, A Ballad of Life Her beauty, fervent as a fiery moon Like a flame rained upon. Sorrow had filled her shaken eyelids' blue, She held a little cithern by the strings, 643 Shaped heartwise, strung with subtle-colored hair Of some dead lute player That in dead years had done delicious things. The seven strings were named accordingly; The first string charity, The second tenderness, The rest were pleasure, sorrow, sleep, and sin, There were three men with her, each garmented The first man's hair was wound upon his head: Pale stains of dust and rust. A riven hood was pulled across his eyes; The next was Shame, with hollow heavy face They may not well endure in any place. Was even increase of pain. The last was Fear, that is akin to Death; He is Shame's friend, and always as Shame saith Fear answers him again. My soul said in me: This is marvelous, If sin and she be kin or amorous. And seeing where maidens served her on their knees, I bade one crave of these To know the cause thereof. Then Fear said: I am Pity that was dead. Thereat her hands began a lute-playing And her sweet mouth a song in a strange tongue; And all the while she sung There was no sound but long tears following Long tears upon men's faces, waxen white But those three following men Became as men raised up among the dead; Great glad mouths open, and fair cheeks made red With child's blood come again. Then I said: Now assuredly I see My lady is perfect, and transfigureth Making them fair as her own eyelids be, And bosom carved to kiss. Now therefore, if her pity further me, Forth, ballad, and take roses in both arms, Where the least thornprick harms; And girdled in thy golden singing-coat, Come thou before my lady and say this: A Leave-taking Borgia, thy gold hair's color burns in me, 645 Thy mouth makes beat my blood in feverish rhymes; Therefore so many as these roses be, Kiss me so many times. Then it may be, seeing how sweet she is, That she will stoop herself none otherwise And kiss thee with soft laughter on thine eyes, Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909] A LEAVE-TAKING LET us go hence, my songs; she will not hear. Let us rise up and part; she will not know. And all the world is bitter as a tear, And how these things are, though ye strove to show, Let us go home and hence; she will not weep. We gave love many dreams and days to keep, Flowers without scent, and fruits that would not grow, Saying, "If thou wilt, thrust in thy sickle and reap." All is reaped now; no grass is left to mow; And we that sowed, though all we fell on sleep, She would not weep. |