Just a year 'tis since we met,
Just a year!
Many suns have risen and set;
Many stars have waxed and waned,
Flowers have fled, but love remained;
Love's bright presence has been here
Just a year.

Will he linger, will he pass,
He who stays
Never 'mid the meads of grass,
Never on the mountain-steeps;
For his swift foot never sleeps,
And his progress he delays
Not for Mays.

Not for May, and not for June
Will he wait,
Not for August's cheery tune;
Not for hungry-hearted prayer
Flung against the hollow air,

Give my hand a sword to hold,
Bring a helmet wrought of gold,
A cuirass
Where the sun may see his rays
Flame and pass,
As he treads the cloudy ways.

Place a weapon in my hand
That will welcome and withstand
Many blows,
In my helmet fix a white
Snowy rose,
For I battle for the right.

On my breastplate let a star
That will glitter from afar
Flash and gleam;
For the night with all its wrong
Like a dream
Shall be scattered at my song.

Every girl in London needs
One who proves him by his deeds

Exalted far above all height,
Dwells the Supreme, array'd in light,
Unchangeable his nature's frame,
He ever was and is the same;
His being through all time extends,
It ne'er begun, and never ends:
No force to his is equal found,
His mighty pow'r no limits bound:
The heav'ns and earth his pow'r first made,
And, at his word, again they fade.
He, Nature's animating soul,
Pervades, directs, supports the whole:
In him alone all live and move,
The creatures of his pow'r and love.
Of each perfection, he possest,

They drive me mad, her rosy lips,
The vermeil gate of song,
Wherefrom my soul its nectar sips,
And her soft whispering tongue.

Her eyes a liquid radiance dart
Beneath their lashes close,
Traps to ensnare my fluttering heart
And rob me of repose.

Her breasts, twin sisters firmly grown,
A milky fountain pour,
Two hills that Love their master own,
More fair than any flower.

But hush! Why of her beauty make
A theme for idle ears?
From Midas' reeds a warning take
What comes to gossipers.

Now clear and white the immortal woman shines,
Pervading with sweet roses of her hands,
And violets of her bosom, and dark strands
Of endless overflowing hair she twines,
Not any room, but the blue dim-seen lines
Of hills, and misty spaces of the air,
And rivers, and brown forests, and the fair
And murmuring interstices of pines,
And larches, and green hollows of the beech:
As a sweet single star she shone before,
But now she fills the multitudinous shore
Plain in the wet reflected orb of each,
And I can winnow silver grains of speech

Day shall succeed to night no more,
No spring shall winter's waste restore,
The moon and stars shall fade away;
And ev'n the sun himself decay;
Whate'er we see, the earth, the sky,
Shall in one gen'ral ruin ly;
From nothing all arose, and all
Again shall into nothing fall:
Secure of death, the soul sublime
Alone defies the wrecks of time,
And, 'midst the ruins of its frame,
From changes free, remains the same.
Man know, howe'er defac'd by sin
Thou hast a spark of God within,
A spark of the eternal fire,

Once clear and white the mortal woman came
And softly filled the silent yearning room
With a superb exuberance of bloom,
A force of sweetness burning like a flame.
My soul leapt forth, her passionate soul to claim:
A sense as of her presence smote the gloom:
I saw her eyes, and heard her lips say, " Come! "
I rose, and almost called her by her name.

She filled the room; and, as for me, I wept
And closed my eyes and opened them again
To find her still before me, — then I slept:
But through my sleep I felt upon my brain

What holde in hope, or trust to fayre allure,
Shee that my sweetest yeares beguylde can tell:
By whome I learne there is no way so sure,
Ne speedier meane to guyde a man to hell.
Loe, he that liste such fayned hope to prooue,
Shall subiect liue, and nere raigne ouer loue.

The pleasure of her piercing eyes methought,
Should be the lightes that leade to happinesse:
Alas I was to bolde, but she more nought,
To false suche fayth, and meaning nothing lesse,
What heauen is hid in loue, who seekes to see,

She stood beside thy bier
And beat her milk-white breast,
Weeping Adonis there,
Adonis laid to rest.

And lo her wailing cry
Did wound my heart within,
'Twere sweet methought to die
If I her grief could win.

When thou dost put to sea,
And sail death's ocean dark,
Take me, dear god, with thee
And let me join thy barque.

We vowed that we would faithful be,
Sosipater Arsinoi,
Calling on Love to hear our oath
And be the witness of our troth;
But she is false, her promise vain;
I constant to my word remain.
Come then, dear Hymen, come to-night
And let the gods reveal their might.
No marriage song for her — instead
A dirge to curse her faithless bed.