Be ye in love with April-tide?
I' faith, in love am I!
For now 't is sun, and now 't is shower,
And now 't is frost, and now 't is flower,
And now 't is Laura laughing-eyed,
And now 't is Laura shy.

Ye doubtful days, O slower glide!
Still smile and frown, O sky!
Some beauty unforeseen I trace
In every change of Laura's face:
Be ye in love with April-tide?
I' faith, in love am I!

Be thou then my beauty named,
Since thy will is to be mine:
For by that am I enflamed,
Which on all alike doth shine.
Others may the light admire,
I onely truely feele the fire.

But, if lofty titles move thee,
Challenge then a Sov'raignes place:
Say I honour when I love thee,
Let me call thy kindnesse grace.
State and Love things divers bee,
Yet will we teach them to agree.

Or, if this be not sufficing,
Be thou stil'd my Goddesse then:
I will love thee sacrificing,
In thine honour Hymnes Ile pen.

Henley, what mark you in the sunset glare?
The year is dying: is that the crimson splash
Wherewith he seals his testament? the cash,
To some conveying of all things good and fair,
To others unutterable emptiness? the stare
Of folly at a bubble trimmed with trash,
Or at a flame, whose unsubstantial ash
Falls in a gaping darkness and despair?
Friend, scholar loved, look longer: how it glows,
Not glares! God opes a perspective to see
The chambers of the ivory palaces.
And who is that within its encircling rose?

Batt he gets children, not for love to reare 'em;
But out of hope his wife might die to beare 'em.

Away with your fictions of flimsy romance,
Those tissues of falsehood which folly has wove!
Give me the mild beam of the soul-breathing glance,
Or the rapture which dwells on the first kiss of love.

Ye rhymers, whose bosoms with phantasy glow,
Whose pastoral passions are made for the grove;
From what blest inspiration your sonnets would flow,
Could you ever have tasted the first kiss of love!

If Apollo should e'er his assistance refuse,
Or the Nine be disposed from your service to rove,
Invoke them no more, bid adieu to the muse,

At the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly
To the lone vale we loved when life was warm in thine eye,
And I think that if spirits can steal from the regions of air
To revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to me there,
And tell me our love is remember'd, even in the sky!

Then I sing the wild song it once was rapture to hear!
When our voices, commingling, breathed like one on the ear,
And, as Echo far off through the vale my sad orison rolls,
I think, oh, my love! 'tis thy voice from the kingdom of souls,

At the dark street corner
where Guilt and Desire
are attempting to stare
each other down
(presently, one of them
will light a cigarette
and glance in the direction
of the abandoned warehouse)
Love came slouching along,
an exploded silence
standing a little apart
but visible anyway
in the yellow, silent, steaming light,
while Guilt and Desire wrangled,
trying not to be overheard
by this trespasser.

Each time Desire looked towards Love,
hoping to find a witness,
Guilt shouted louder
and shook them hips

At sixteen years she knew no care;
— How could she, sweet and pure as light?
And there pursued her everywhere
— Butterflies all white.

A lover looked. She dropped her eyes
— That glowed like pansies wet with dew;
And lo, there came from out the skies
— Butterflies all blue.

Before she guessed her heart was gone;
— The tale of love was swiftly told;
And all about her wheeled and shone
— Butterflies all gold.

Then he forsook her one sad morn;
— She wept and sobbed, " Oh, love, come back! "

At once, from hence, my lines and I depart,
I to my soft still walks, they to my heart;
I to the nurse, they to the child of art;

Yet as a firm house, though the carpenter
Perish, doth stand: as an ambassador
Lies safe, howe'er his king be in danger:

So, though I languish, pressed with melancholy,
My verse, the strict map of my misery,
Shall live to see that, for whose want I die.

Therefore I envy them, and do repent,
That from unhappy me, things happy are sent;
Yet as a picture, or bare sacrament,

At last I put off love,
For twice ten years
The daysman of my thought,
And hope, and doing;
Being ashamed thereof,
And faint of fears
And desolations, wrought
In his pursuing,

Since first in youthtime those
Disquietings
That heart-enslavement brings
To hale and hoary,
Became my housefellows,
And, fool and blind,
I turned from kith and kind