I have seen roses damasked, red and white, And in some perfumes is there more delight My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: CXLVI Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end? So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men; "ALEXIS, HERE SHE STAYED" ALEXIS, here she stayed; among these pines, Here did she spread the treasure of her hair, More rich than that brought from the Colchian mines. She set her by these muskèd eglantines, The happy place the print seems yet to bear; Her voice did sweeten here thy sugared lines, To which winds, trees, beasts, birds, did lend their ear. A Sonnet of the Moon 1217 Me here she first perceived, and here a morn But, ah! what served it to be happy so, Since passed pleasures double but new woe? "WERE I AS BASE AS IS THE LOWLY PLAIN” WERE I as base as is the lowly plain, And you, my love, as high as heaven above, Yet should the thoughts of me, your humble swain, Were I as high as heaven above the plain, Till heaven waxed blind and till the world were done. A SONNET OF THE MOON Look how the pale Queen of the silent night So as you come, and as you do depart, Joys ebb and flow within my tender heart. TO MARY UNWIN MARY! I want a lyre with other strings, Such aid from Heaven as some have feigned they drew, An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new And undebased by praise of meaner things; That, ere through age or woe I shed my wings, I may record thy worth with honor due, In verse as musical as thou art true, And that immortalizes whom it sings: But thou hast little need. There is a Book By seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light, A chronicle of actions just and bright: There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary, shine; "WHY ART THOU SILENT” WHY art thou silent? Is thy love a plant Be left more desolate, more dreary cold 'Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know! William Wordsworth (1770-1850] WHEN do I see thee most, beloved one? When in the light the spirits of mine eyes Before thy face, their altar, solemnize The worship of that Love through thee made known? Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,) Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies, soul only sees thy soul its own? And my O love, my love! if I no more should see Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee, Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,— How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope V HEART'S HOPE By what word's power, the key of paths untrod, Till parted waves of Song yield up the shore For lo! in some poor rhythmic period, Lady, I fain would tell how evermore Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor Thee from myself, neither our love from God. As to all hearts all things shall signify; In Spring's birth-hour, of other Springs gone by. XV THE BIRTH-BOND HAVE you not noted, in some family Where two were born of a first marriage-bed, How still they own their gracious bond, though fed In act and thought of one goodwill; but each Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love, O born with me somewhere that men forget, XIX SILENT NOON YOUR hands lie open in the long fresh grass, The finger-points look through like rosy blooms: All round our nest, far as the eye can pass, Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly XXVI MID-RAPTURE THOU lovely and beloved, thou my love; Whose kiss seems still the first; whose summoning eyes, Even now, as for our love-world's new sunrise, Shed very dawn; whose voice, attuned above |