I would have died to win her:
I loved her past a dream.
Ah! hand in hand we wandered
Beside the mountain-stream.
I kissed her raven tresses:
I kissed her gentle hand:
I was the proudest lover
In all the wide wide land.

But ah! the rich man sought her;
He bribed her with his gold.
He changed her heart. He bought her.
Her love for me grew cold.
And now my life is over —
In vain the sun may rise;
I never loved the sunshine,
I only loved her eyes!

Ah! my lost love, my darling,
Will your heart one day see

Why seek for love beyond the sky,
In stars that swim through space?
Behold! sweet love is very nigh,
And very close his face.
On purple fells, by forest-wells,
By our blue ocean's side,
Love lives and smiles, and dreams and dwells;
He lords it far and wide.

Not in the shining distant space
Where faint star-clusters gleam
Does Love reveal his sovereign face, —
Nay, here he loves to dream.
Our dim old earth can hear his mirth
Through forest-arches ring;
Aye, English lake and Scottish firth

By love's great Queen who rides the ocean swell,
My Bella's beauty makes her beauty's belle.

I.

You sing with voice, I sing with words:
But both are one
In loving music like the birds
And loving flowers and sun.

II.

The voice of radiant youth is thine;
Youth's glance supreme,
Most sweet of all things, most divine,
That makes all life a dream.

III.

Mine only this — the while I may
Before thy throne
To bend, and call the dawn of day
Within thy heart my own.

Once did I weepe, and grone,
Drinke teares, draw loathed breath,
And all for loue of one
Who did affect my death:
But now, thankes to disdaine,
I liue relieu'd of paine;
For sighs, I singing goe,
I burne not as before, no, no, no, no.

A thought of her always
stayed in my head, at the back of it,
lardered there, like a berry
in a squirrel's cheek. Those days
that was my amulet
against every adversary —

loneliness, weltschermerz, dull
age and its self-mockery
in presence of anything
buoyant and beautiful.
I would think of her, you see,
young, lovely and welcoming ...

Now I am not so sure —
with her gone — that " Man's love
is of man's life a thing
apart." Unless hid failure
and the slow dissolution of
all purpose be worth husbanding.

God as love ...
I can go with that
Isn't love the ultimate?
Wouldn't I die
For what I love?

Or kill — couldn't I —
what menaced it? —
Given the above
and not to underrate
God as hate ...











By permission of the author.

Thine eyes are kindly bent on mine,
Their gentle glance I scarce can bear:
It bids me every hope resign,
It fills my soul with deep despair.
Alas! that look so kind, so calm, so free
Tells me thou lovest not as I love thee.

When thou'rt afar I see thy face;
Before me still it softly gleams;
The vision has not half thy grace,
I cannot paint thee in my dreams:
Yet ah! dear face, would'st thou but gaze on me
With such a look as in those dreams I see.

The vision changes in my sight,
No more it looks as I am feeling;

This poem was written around 869 when Michizane, aged twenty-five by Japanese count, was still a university student. Roka (literally, " hallway " ) was a nickname given to the section of the Sugawara mansion where the family maintained a private school that prepared young men for admission to the university. A group of them have joined Michizane in his study. This poem is about poetry, wine, friendship, and the passage of time, all of which are common elements in Chinese literature and give this poem a Chinese feeling, amplified by the allusion in line 4.

Go, little book, and sing of love and beauty,
To tempt the worldling into fairy land:
Tell him that airy dreams are sacred duty,
Bring better wealth than aught his toils command
Toils fraught with mickle harm.

But if thou meet some spirit high and tender
On blessed works and noblest love intent:
Tell him that airy dreams of Nature's splendour,
With graver thoughts and hallowed musings blent,
Prove no too earthly charm.