Short Poems

There is great gain,
Of pride and pain:
Let me be proud to claim the highest for my own:
Let me bear pain, to fight my claim alone.

If modest merit ever claim'd thy tear,
Behold this monument, and shed it here:
Here every blooming virtue beam'd in one,
The friend, the lover, and the duteous son.
Bless'd youth! whose bosom Nature form'd to glow
With purest flame the heart of man can know,
Go, where bright angels heavenly raptures prove,
And melt in visions of seraphic love.

When age, all-patient, and without regret,
Lies down in peace, and pays the general debt,
'Tis weakness most unmanly to deplore
The death of those who relish life no more.
But when fair youth, that every promise gave,
Sheds his sweet blossom in the blasting grave,
All eyes o'erflow with many a streaming tear,
And each sad bosom heaves the sigh sincere.

When I love most — I am turned psalmist.
I have expression from my wrong.
I bay like a ghost-scenting hound,
" Where is God hid? for I would smite him with a song. "
Come back, Jehovah,
Give me cover.
Come back, old god,
For I have lost my lover.

How can I reach you? Though I hold you close the essential you escapes me; I cannot pierce to the core of your being .
Though I have given you all myself, what have I gained? Only my own happiness, not yours — so much more precious. Can I be glad seeing the life-weariness in your eyes?
What do you seek from me? Oblivion? Ask it of death, not of me. Happiness? I can only give you happiness if your love is great enough to create it .
To be loved is nothing; to receive is nothing. If you seek happiness, love and give .

Jove -born Bacchus when possest
(Care exiling) of my breast,
In a sprightly Saraband
Guides my foot and ready hand,
Which an even measure sets
'Twixt my voice and Castanets ;
Tir'd we sit and kiss; and then
To our dancing fall agen.

CLEODAMUS

Which will you have is sweetest, Myrson, spring, winter; autumn, or summer? which are you fainest should come? Summer, when all our labours are fulfilled, or sweet autumn when our hunger is least and lightest, or the winter when no man can work — for winter also hath delights for many with her warm firesides and leisure hours — or doth the pretty spring-time please you best? Say, where is the choice of your heart? To be sure, we have time and to spare for talking.

MYRSON

Distaff, friend of them that weave and spin, gift of the Grey-eyed Huswife above to all good huswives here below, come away, come away to Neleus' town so bright and fair, where the Cyprian's precinct lies fresh and green among the tall soft reeds; for 'tis thither bound I ask of Zeus fair passage, with intent both to glad my eyes with the sight and my heart with the love of a dear good child of the Ladies o' the Voice of Delight, by name Nicias, and to give you, my pretty offspring of laboured ivory, into the hands of the goodwife of the same, to be her helpmate in the making of much wool into

Once upon a time when the little Heracles was ten months old, Alcmena of Midea took him and Iphicles that was his younger by a night, and laid them, washed both and suckled full, in the fine brazen buckler Amphitryon had gotten in spoil of Pterelaüs, and setting her hand upon their heads said " Sleep my babes, sleep sweetly and light; sleep, sweethearts, brothers twain, goodly children. Heaven prosper your slumbering now and your awakening to-morrow. " And as she spake, she rocked the great targe till they fell asleep.

There was once a heart-sick swain had a cruel fere, the face of the fere goodly but his ways not like to it; for he hated him that loved him, and had for him never a whit of kindness, and as for Love, what manner of God he might be or what manner of bow and arrows carry, or how keen and bitter were the shafts he shot for his delectation, these things wist he not at all, but both in his talk and conversation knew no yielding.