Is it to love to muse the live long day
On one dear object tho he's far away
And when the shadows usher in the night
His form in dreams to swim before the sight
Is it to love — when in the social train
He mixes not the mirth and song are vain
Nor wit nor sentiment nor attic ease
When he is absent have the power to please
Is it to love to feel the vital tide
Mount to the cheek and then in haste subside
The pulse to tremble and the heart to melt
Then sink away as if they never felt
All this and more a thousand times I prove

T HIRSIS a youth of the inspired train,
Faire Sacharissa lov'd, but lov'd in vain;
Like Phaebus sung, the no less amorous boy;
Like Daphne , she as lovely and as coy;
With numbers, he the flying Nymph pursues,
With numbers, such as Phaebus selfe might use;
Such is the chase, when love and fancy leads
O'er craggy mountains, and through flowry meads,
Invok'd to testifie the lovers care,
Or forme some image of his cruell Faire:
Urg'd with his fury like a wounded Deer
O'er these he fled, and now approaching neer,

Think not my Phebe , cause a cloud
Doth now thy heavenly beauty shroud,
My wandring eye
Can stoop to common beauties of the sky,
Be thou but kind, and this Eclipse
Shall neither hinder eyes, nor lips;
For we will meet

Thine elder that I am, thou must not cling
To me, nor mournful for my love entreat:
And yet, Alcaeus, as the sudden spring
Is love, yea, and to veiled Demeter sweet.

Sweeter than tone of harp, more gold than gold
Is thy young voice to me; yet, ah, the pain
To learn I am beloved now I am old,
Who, in my youth, loved, as thou must, in vain.

Thick and stormy was the night,
— Not a single star,
When I climbed to my delight,
— Where the roses are;

Where the roses are and love,
— In a bower warm,
Climbing up to heaven above
— Night and wind and storm.

They tell me that I must not love,
That thou wilt spurn the free
And unbought tenderness that gives
Its hidden wealth to thee.
It may be so: I heed it not,
Nor would I change my blissful lot,
When thus I am allowed to make
My heart a bankrupt for thy sake.

They tell me when the fleeting charm
Of novelty is o'er,
Thou 'lt turn away with careless brow
And think of me no more.
It may be so! enough for me
If sunny skies still smile o'er thee,
Or I can trace, when thou art far,
Thy pathway like a distant star.

They may talk of love in a cottage,
And bowers of trellised vine —
Of nature bewitchingly simple,
And milkmaids half divine;
They may talk of the pleasure of sleeping
In the shade of a spreading tree,
And a walk in the fields at morning,
By the side of a footstep free!

But give me a sly flirtation
By the light of a chandelier —
With music to play in the pauses,
And nobody very near;
Or a seat on a silken sofa,
With a glass of pure old wine,
And mamma too blind to discover
The small white hand in mine.

They cannot wholly pass away,
How far soe'er above;
Nor we, the lingerers, wholly stay
Apart from those we love:
For spirits in eternity,
As shadows in the sun,
Reach backward into Time, as we,
Like lifted clouds, reach on.

They are so moving in
their sadness, gentleness and longing —
all the sad old men who once
were all the sad young men.

How can you not be moved
by their loneliness and desolation —
their faint dreams and hopes
of love, a new love, a friendship?

The poorest and the ugliest still long
for just a passing warmth, a touch,
the clasp of hands, the feel, the joy
of another's nakedness and strength and grace
enriching all that poverty and emptiness and death.

Friendship is only for the young.

These lovely groves of fountain-trees that shake
A burning spray against autumnal cool
Descend again in molten drops to make
The rutted path a river and a pool.

They rise in silence, fall in quietude,
Lie still as looking-glass to every sense
Save where their lion-colour in the wood
Roars to miraculous heat and turbulence.