Since , Oh, Beloved, you are not even faithful
To me, who loved you so, for one short night,
For one brief space of darkness, though my absence
Did but endure until the dawning light;

Since all your beauty — which was mine — you squandered
On that which now lies dead across your door;
See here this knife, made keen and bright to kill you.
You shall not see the sun rise any more.

Lie still! Lie still! In all the empty village

Only in August my heart was aflame,
Catching the scent of your Wind-stirred hair,
Now, though you spread it to soften my sleep
Through the night, I should hardly care.

Only last August I drank that water
Because it had chanced to cool your hands;
When love is over, how little of love
Even the lover understands!

Oh , Silver Stars that shine on what I love,
Touch the soft hair and sparkle in the eyes, —
Send, from your calm serenity above,
Sleep to whom, sleepless, here, despairing lies.

Broken, forlorn, upon the Desert sand
That sucks these tears, and utterly abased,
Looking across the lonely, level land,
With thoughts more desolate than any waste.

Planets that shine on what I so adore,
Now thrown, the hour is late, in careless rest,
Protect that sleep, which I may watch no more,
I, the cast out, dismissed and dispossessed.

Oh Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace:
Where there is hatred, may I bring love,
Where there is offence, may I bring forgiveness,
Where there is discord, may I bring union,
Where there is doubt, may I bring the faith,
Where there is error, may I bring the truth,
Where there is despair, may I bring hope,
Where there is sadness, may I bring joy,
Where there is darkness, may I bring light.

Grant, oh Master, that I may seek not so much
to be comforted, as to comfort,
to be understood, as to understand,
to be loved, as to love.

Men talke of Loue that know not what it is:
For could we know what Loue may be indeede,
We would not haue our mindes so led amisse
With idle toies, that wanton humours feede;
But in the rules of higher reason read
What Loue may be, so from the world conceal'd:
Yet all too plainely to the world reueal'd.

Some one doth faine Loue is a blinded God:
His blindnesse him more halfe a diuell showes:
For Loue with blindnesse neuer made abode,
Which all the power of Wit and Reason knowes:

A WAKE , my soule out of the sleepe of sinne.
And shake off slouth the subiect of thy shame;
Search out the way how best thou mayst beginne
To holy worke thine humble will to frame:
Then proue not weary of a little paine,
When fleshe's griefe will breed the spirit's gaine.

Confesse thyselfe vnworthy of the sence
To learne the least of the supernall Will;
Beseech the heauens in strength of their defence
To saue and keepe thee from infernall ill:
Then fall to worke, that all the world may see
The ioyfull loue betwixt thy God and thee.

F AIRE in a plot of earthly paradise,
Vpon a hill, the Muses made a Maze:
In midst whereof within a Phœnix eies,
There sits a grace that hath the world at gase:
Which Phœnix is but name vnto a nature
That shows the world hath scarcely such a creature:

This true loues saint, by worthy beauty crowned.
Did seeme to wish but not expresse her will:
When straunge desires were in deuises drowned
To finde out wonders farthest from her wil:
The worlde came in, with presents many a one
But yet alas, her loue could like of none.

A BLUSH-ROSE lay in the summer;
There were golden lights in the sky,
And a woman saw the blossom
As she stood with her lover nigh.

A band in the flowering distance
Play'd a dreamy Italian air,
Like a memory changed to music,
And it drifted everywhere.

'Twas an exiled love of its Southland,
That air, and its delicate wails
Were only the wandering echoes
Of the songs of nightingales.

" I love you, " he tenderly whisper'd;
" I love you, " she answer'd as low:
And the music grew sweeter and sweeter,

Oh, tell ye not my lover,
Lest he perchance should sorrow at the tale,
That from the time we parted
My cheek grew pale;
Tell him not, though he left me, — for a bride
Beauteous, I own, as the bright moon above her, —
Tell him not that I died
Love-lorn and broken-hearted.

Say not how I have perished;
Oh! no, no, no, — say you not that I pined,
Because I was forsaken,
Or he unkind:
Say that for his sweet wife I ever prayed,
And that his dear, dear name I ever cherished,
Till I to sleep was laid
Where I shall never waken.

LOVE , that Love cannot share,
Now turn to air!
And fade to ashes, O my daily bread;
Save only if you may
So be the stay
Of the uncomforted.

Look down, you far-off lights,
From smoke-veiled heights, —
If there be dwelling in our wilderness!
For Love, the Refugee,
No stronghold can there be, —
No shelter more, while these go shelterless.

Love hath no home beside
His own two arms spread wide; —
The only home, among all walls that are;
So there may come to cling,
Some yet forlorner thing,