HUNGER FOR HER IS PREFERABLE TO HAPPINESS WITH ANOTHER

Ill-starred was I the morning I was born
(If that the constellations have such sway),
Hard was the cradle where I cried that day
And hard the earth by my young footsteps worn;
But harder still, the Lady whose bright scorn
With savage Love conspiring struck dismay
Into my heart... Her eyes, and only they,
Can cure the wound... Her eyes still find me torn.
O cruel Love, thou art, if anything,
More kind: for she, indifferent to the flame
That eats apace, regrets the arrow's sting,

WHEREIN HE TREATS OF LOVE IN EXTREMIS

Remarking in those orbs the orb of light
Where Love serenely rules that agitates
My own, the sick heart quits the soul's dim gates
Once more upon her paradisal flight;
Perceiving, then, how bitter-sweet her plight,
And the world-tangling web which she creates,
She sighs for thwarted love and hesitates,
Recalling the curb's tooth, the fanged spur's bite.
By these two mixed irreconcilables she,
With frozen or with fiery wishes filled,
Stands torn forever in a blind dispute:

WHEREIN HOPE MAY BE HARASSED, BUT NOT DESTROYED, BY ENVY

O Envy, virtue's constant nemesis,
Breathing hot challenge to the sweet and fine!
By what soft stealth, furtive and serpentine,
Have you gained ingress, changed her into this?
You have uprooted thence my deepest bliss,
Showing me, in this happier love than mine,
How she, that once bestowed such looks benign,
Seems cold now, coiled for a perpetual hiss.
Yet though, by subtle little cruelties,
You grudge my good and sneer at my distress,

WHEREIN HIS HOPE IS AS QUENCHLESS AS HER CRUELTY

Love has abandoned me to cold embraces
Which kill me without cause: if I complain,
My martyrdom is doubled and my pain.
(In silence love, though death that love effaces!)
Her furious look can melt the frozen spaces
Of winter's Rhine and split the stone in twain;
Her loveliness is matched by her disdain
And others happy rouse her fierce grimaces.
As for the rest, a thing of marble, breathing
And moving, heart of triple adamant
So hard, my utmost skill is all too scant.

WHEREIN EXCESS OF LOVE SILENCES HIS PURPOSE TO SPEAK

Often, when to my fancy her dear face
The colour of compassion took, I strove
With eloquent tears, with courteous speech to move
My stubborn angel in this piteous case:
But let swift anger for a flash displace
Her pity — and my hopes are vain thereof:
My life, death, good and ill by sovereign Love
Are trusted to her mercy and her grace.
Wherefore, whenever my mouth is moved to speak,
I scarce can bear the burden I proclaim,
By passion rendered timorous and weak.

WHEREIN EXCESS OF LOVE LOCKS HIS TONGUE

Filled with a thought whose beauty makes me shun
My kind and wander in the world alone,
I now and then must roll away the stone,
Pursuing her from whom I ought to run;
And see her pass, O sweet, O cruel one!
And my soul flutters and is almost flown,
And falls back, such armed sighs about her moan,
Love's dear antagonist... I am undone...
Be still, my heart! Do I not see beneath
Her proud and pitiless forehead one mild beam
Of mercy, almost thawing my heart's death?

WHEREIN HOPE WILL OUTLAST LIFE

Love bringing back to mind that princely thought
Which is the old familiar of our lives,
Comforts me well, saying our prospect thrives
As never before, nearer and nearer brought
To heaven. I, who have seen his whispers fraught
With double meanings where half-truth still strives
With deadly untruth, hang between two hives
Suspended, Yea and Nay at quarrel caught.
Meantime the years move on, and I behold
Mirrored in my true glass the traitor Time
Whose threats her promise and my hope enfold:

WHEREIN HIS LADY SINGS

If Love her lovely eyes to earth compel,
And in a sigh resolving all her soul,
Permit the music of her voice to roll
Heavenward like a soft angelic bell,
My heart, divorced so sweetly from its shell,
(New thoughts, new wishes roused beyond control)
" O Heaven, " it cries, " grant me this golden dole,
That, listening, Death may ravish me as well! "
But ah, the sense enchanted in that mesh
Melodious, the will inflamed to hear
More and yet more of Heaven so wildly near,

TO ONE WHO DESIRED LATIN VERSES OF HIM

Had I not quit that delphic cavern where
The young Apollo first roared prophecies,
Verona, Mantua were not sole to seize
The bayleaf: Florence too might boast an heir;
But since the grotto's inspired spring is bare
And cannot nourish this my land, I please
Some other planet, and with novelties
Of stroke and sickle harvest wheat from tare.
Dried is the olive; elsewhere twists that stream
Whose silver secret source made one high hill
Immortal, thriving in the noblest dream:

WHEREIN NIGHT WITH HER GIFT OF SLEEP VISITS ALL SAVE HIM

It is the vigil dark-eyed silence keeps
By earth and heaven: each bird, each beast in chains
Of silk reposes; Night's black chariot reins
Glitter with stars; the waveless water sleeps.
I wake, brood, burn, shed tears: and though love weeps,
Its one dear reason still the heart retains;
War is the portion no grief, no wrath drains,
But in the thought of her a solace creeps.
Ah me! that sweet and bitter nourishment,
Strange twins, from one bright quenchless fountain come;