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The Summer Wind

The bugling of the summer wind
Is sweet upon the hill:
I love to hear its eddies
The heather-crannies fill.

It plays upon the bracken
A blithe fanfarronade:
And thro' the moss-cups whistleth
" The Fairy Raid. "

It leaps from birch to rowan,
And laugheth long and loud,
Then with a spring is vanished,
And rideth on a cloud!

The Sun Lord

Low laughing, blithely scorning —
Beware, beware, of flaming wings,
Love hunts thee down the morning!

His white feet dip i' the hillside springs,
He mocks thy flying terror!
The woodland with his laughter rings!

He'll make thee his slave to follow,
Nor shall he forgive thee, maid, thine error,
Who spied thee hid in the hollow.

Too late, too late the warning!
Behold the flash of flaming wings —
Love hath thee now i' the morning!

From Oversea

From oversea—
Violets for memories,
I send to thee;

Let them bear thoughts of me,
With pleasant memories
To touch the heart of thee,
Far oversea.

A little way it is for love to flee,
Love wing'd with memories,
Hither to thither overseas

What Is Love?

'T IS a child of phansie's getting,
Brought up between hope and fear,
Fed with smiles, grown by uniting
Strong, and so kept by desire;

'Tis a perpetual vestal fire
Never dying,
Whose smoak like incense doth aspire
Upwards flying.

'Tis a soft magnetique stone
Attracting hearts by sympathie,
Binding up close two souls in one,
Both discoursing secretlie:

'Tis the true Gordian knot that tyes
Yet ne'er unbinds,
Fixing thus two lovers eyes
As wel as mindes.

'Tis the sphere's heavenly harmonie

Conversation between Friends

" Trust love even if it brings sorrow.
Do not close up your heart. "
" Ah no, my friend, your words are dark, I cannot understand them. "

" The heart is only for giving away with a tear and a song, my love. "
" Ah no, my friend, your words are dark, I cannot understand them. "

" Pleasure is frail like a dewdrop, while it laughs it dies.
But sorrow is strong and abiding. Let sorrowful love wake in your eyes. "
" Ah no, my friend, your words are dark, I cannot understand them. "

Love and Marriage

In vain does Hymen, with religious vows
Oblige his slaves to wear his chains with ease;
A privilege alone that Love allows,
'Tis Love alone can make our fetters please.

The angry tyrant lays his yoke on all,
Yet in his fiercest rage is charming still;
Officious Hymen comes whene'er we call,
But haughty Love comes only when he will.

Love

All love, at first, like gen'rous wine,
Ferments and frets, until 'tis fine;
But when 'tis settled on the lee,
And from th' impurer matter free,
Becomes the richer still, the older,
And proves the pleasanter, the colder.
Love is too great a happiness
For wretched mortals to possess:
For, could it hold inviolate
Against those cruelties of Fate,
Which all felicities below
By rigid laws are subject to,
It would become a bliss too high
For perishing mortality,
Translate to earth the joys above;
For nothing goes to Heaven but love.

Prelude

In a grove of ilex
Of oak and of chestnut,
Far on the sunswept
Heights of Tusculum,
There groweth a blossom,
A snow-white bloom,
Which many have heard of,
But few have seen.
Oft bright as the morning,
Oft pale as moonlight,
There in the greenness,
In shadow and sunshine
It grows, awaiting
The hand that shall pluck it:
For this blossom springeth
From the heart of a poet
And of her who loved him
In the long ago,
Here on the sunswept
Heights of Tusculum.
And them it awaiteth,
Deep lovers only,

On Love

So glides along the wanton Brook
With gentle pace into the Mayne,
Courting the bankes with amorous look
Hee never meanes to see againe:
And so doth Fortune use to Smile
Upon the short-liv'd Favourites face,
Whose swelling hopes shee will beguile,
And allwayes casts him in her race:
And so doth the fantastick Boy,
The God of the Illmanag'd flames,
Who ne're kept word in promis'd Joy
To Lover, nor to loving dames.
Soe all alike will constant prove,
Both Fortune, running-streames, and Love.

Song

" To suffer grief is to be strong,
And to be strong is beautiful and rare " — —
'Twas in thy court, O Love, I learned it there,
This sad sweet song!

No one man dwells thy ways among,
Who shall not learn thy thousand ways of grief
Or how wild fears succeed each poor relief
In dark'ning throng:

There too a man may learn to put away

The crowned summit of his heart's desire;
But O, the bitter burning of love's fire —
Its bitterer ashes grey!