When our delight is desolate,
And hope is overthrown;
And when the heart must bear the weight
Of its own love alone;

And when the soul, whose thoughts are deep,
Must guard them unrevealed,
And feel that it is full, but keep
That fullness calm and sealed;

When love's long glance is dark with pain —
With none to meet or cheer;
And words of woe are wild in vain
For those who cannot hear;

When earth is dark and memory
Pale in the heaven above, —
The heart can bear to lose its joy,
But not to cease to love.

But oh! not Lovely Helen, nor the pride
Of that most ancient Ilium matched with doom
Men murdered Priam in his royal room
And Troy was burned with fire and Hector died.
For even Hector's dreadful day was more
Than all his breathing courage dared defend
The armoured light and bulwark of the war
Trailed his great story to the accustomed end.

He was the city's buttress, Priam's Son,
The Soldier born in bivouac praises great
And horns in double front of battle won.
Yet down he went: when unremembering fate

The Baron o Leys to France is gane,
The fashion and tongue to learn,
But hadna been there a month or twa
Till he gat a lady wi bairn.

But it fell ance upon a day
The lady mournd fu sairlie;
Says, Who 's the man has me betrayed?
It gars me wonder and fairlie.

Then to the fields to him she went,
Saying, Tell me what they ca thee;
Or else I 'll mourn and rue the day,
Crying, alas that ever I saw thee!

" Some ca's me this, some ca's me that,
I carena fat befa me;
For when I 'm at the schools o France

Beloved One, your body and mine,
They have known the never-still, deranged
Poetry born from the touch
Of legs, and breasts, and lips:
The poetry that brings to flesh
An almost indescribable escape,
So thinly strung, and yet so enormous
That breath can scarcely bear
The rhythms of its outward flight.
We have been scorched by knowledge.
The dim point always just beyond
The farthest reach of longing—
The point that men call heaven
Appalled us, stood an inch away from us.
We will never forget
How near we came to grazing

Go, lovely rose, and tell the lovelier fair
That he which loved her most was never there.

And think'st thou that Woman will smile upon those,
Whom Adversity marks for her own?
Ah, no! — hand in hand with dame Fortune she goes,
On the affluent only her love she bestows,
And thinks that the fount from which happiness flows,
Is splendor and riches alone.

I hop'd that my Emily's love would not fade,
Though fortune and friends were all flown;
Foolish thought! — with my hopes her feign'd passion decay'd,
And deserted and spurn'd by the treacherous maid,
Adversity's storm I am doom'd to pervade,
Unpitied, uncheer'd, and alone!

A mayde Cristes me bit yorne
that Ich hire wurche a luve-ron,
For hwan heo myhte best ileorne
To taken onoþer soþ lefmon,
that treowest were of alle berne
And best wyte cuþe a freo wymmon.
Ich hire nule nowiht werne;
Ich hire wule teche as Ic con.

Mayde, her þu myht biholde
this worldes luve nys bute o res
And is byset so fele volde,
Vikel and frakel and wok and les.
theos þeines þat her weren bolde
Beoþ aglyden so wyndes bles;
Under molde hi liggeþ colde
And faleweþ so doþ medewe gres.

Nis no mon iboren o lyve

Still hovering round the fair at fifty four,
Unfit to Love, unable to give o'er,
A flesh fly that still flutters on the Wing
Awake to Buz, but not alive to Sting,
Brisk where he cannot, backward where he can,
The teazing Ghost of the departed Man.

1

If e're passion in hopes of refining Delight
Shall engage me beyond the Amour of a Night
To seek dearer Arms, and a faithfuller kiss,
May it [be] for such Charms, such a Mistriss as this.
May her Face and her Mind to alure me conspire
And what one begun may the other raise higher,
Relenting her Nature and moving her Air
With Eyes of Desire to keep Hearts from Despair.

2

May She neither be easy, nor yet too severe,
But with Handsome Resistance her Yeilding endear,
By Winning Delays, pleasing Hope lead along,

O mother Earth, by the bright sky above thee,
I love thee, O, I love thee!
And yet they say that I must leave thee soon;
 And if it must be so,
Then to what sun or moon
 Or star I am to go,
 Or planet, matters not for me to know.
O mother Earth, by the bright sky above thee,
I love thee, O I love thee!

O, whither will you send me?
O, wherefore will you rend me
 From your warm bosom, mother mine?—
I can't fix my affections
On a state of conic sections,
And I don't care how old Daedalus
May try to coax and wheedle us