TO * * * * · To G. A. W · To the Ladies who Saw Me Crown’d · Sharing Eve’s Apple · Sonnet Written in Answer to a Sonnet Ending thus: · Oh, I am frighten’d with most hateful thoughts! · Sonnet to Sleep
Hadst thou liv’d in days of old,
O what wonders had been told
Of thy lively countenance,
And thy humid eyes that dance
In the midst of their own brightness;
In the very fane of lightness.
Over which thine eyebrows, leaning,
Picture out each lovely meaning:
In a dainty bend they lie,
Like two streaks across the sky,
Or the feathers from a crow,
Fallen on a bed of snow.
Of thy dark hair that extends
Into many graceful bends:
As the leaves of Hellebore
Turn to whence they sprung before.
And behind each ample curl
Peeps the richness of a pearl.
Downward too flows many a tress
With a glossy waviness;
Full, and round like globes that rise
From the censer to the skies
Through sunny air. Add too, the sweetness
Of thy honied voice; the neatness
Of thine ankle lightly turn’d:
With those beauties, scarce discrn’d,
Kept with such sweet privacy,
That they seldom meet the eye
Of the little loves that fly
Round about with eager pry.
Saving when, with freshening lave,
Thou dipp’st them in the taintless wave;
Like twin water lillies, born
In the coolness of the morn.
O, if thou hadst breathed then,
Now the Muses had been ten.
Couldst thou wish for lineage higher
Than twin sister of Thalia?
At least for ever, evermore,
Will I call the Graces four.
Hadst thou liv’d when chivalry
Lifted up her lance on high,
Tell me what thou wouldst have been?
Ah! I see the silver sheen
Of thy broidered, floating vest
Cov’ring half thine ivory breast;
Which, O heavens! I should see,
But that cruel destiny
Has placed a golden cuirass there;
Keeping secret what is fair.
Like sunbeams in a cloudlet nested
Thy locks in knightly casque are rested:
O’er which bend four milky plumes
Like the gentle lilly’s blooms
Springing from a costly vase.
See with what a stately pace
Comes thine alabaster steed;
Servant of heroic deed!
O’er his loins, his trappings glow
Like the northern lights on snow.
Mount his back! thy sword unsheath!
Sign of the enchanter’s death;
Bane of every wicked spell;
Silencer of dragon’s yell.
Alas! thou this wilt never do:
Thou art an enchantress too,
And wilt surely never spill
Blood of those whose eyes can kill.
Nymph of the downward smile, and sidelong glance,
In what diviner moments of the day
Art thou most lovely? When gone far astray
Into the labyrinths of sweet utterance?
Or when serenely wand’ring in a trance
Of sober thought? Or when starting away,
With careless robe, to meet the morning ray,
Thou spar’st the flowers in thy mazy dance?
Haply ’tis when thy ruby lips part sweetly,
And so remain, because thou listenest:
But thou to please wert nurtured so completely
That I can never tell what mood is best.
I shall as soon pronounce which grace more neatly
Trips it before Apollo than the rest.
What is there in the universal Earth
More lovely than a Wreath from the bay tree?
Haply a Halo round the Moon - a glee
Circling from three sweet pair of lips in mirth;
And haply you will say the dewy birth
Of morning roses - riplings tenderly
Spread by the Halcyon’s breast upon the sea -
But these comparisons are nothing worth -
Then is there nothing in the world so fair?
The silvery tears of April? - Youth of May? 10
Or June that breaths out life for butterflies?
No - none of these can from my favourite bear
Away the Palm - yet shall it ever pay
Due reverence to your most sovereign eyes.
I
O blush not so! O blush not so!
Or I shall think you knowing;
And if you smile the blushing while,
Then maidenheads are going.
II
There’s a blush for won’t, and a blush for shan’t,
And a blush for having done it:
There’s a blush for thought and a blush for naught,
And a blush for just begun it.
III
O sigh not so! O sigh not so!
For it sounds of Eve’s sweet pippin;
By these loosen’d lips you have tasted the pips
And fought in an amorous nipping.
IV
Will you play once more at nice-cut-core,
For it only will last our youth out,
And we have the prime of the kissing time,
We have not one sweet tooth out.
V
There’s a sigh for yes, and a sigh for no,
And a sigh for I can’t bear it!
O what can be done, shall we stay or run?
O cut the sweet apple and share it!
Dark eyes are dearer far
Than those that mock the hyacinthine bell!
J. H. Reynolds
Blue! ’Tis the life of heaven, - the domain
Of Cynthia, - the wide palace of the sun, -
The tent of Hesperus, and all his train, -
The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey and dun.
Blue! Tis the life of waters: - Ocean
And all its vassal streams, pools numberless,
May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can
Subside, if not to dark blue nativeness.
Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest-green,
Married to green in all the sweetest flowers, -
10
Forget-me-not, - the bluebell, - and, that queen
Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers
Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great,
When in an Eye thou art, alive with fate!
Oh, I am frighten’d with most hateful thoughts!
Perhaps her voice is not a nightingale’s,
Perhaps her teeth are not the fairest pearl;
Her eye-lashes may be, for aught I know,
Not longer than the mayfly’s small fan-horns;
There may not be one dimple on her hand;
And freckles many; ah! a careless nurse,
In haste to teach the little thing to walk,
May have crumpt2 up a pair of Dian’s legs,
And warpt the ivory of a Juno’s neck.
O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom - pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the ‘Amen,’ ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes, -
10
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my Soul.