Amusing myself with rocks, I sit peering into the valley;
searching for blossoms, I wander round and round the temple.
Again and again I hear the birds talking,
and here and there the voice of the stream.

A MONG his books he sits all day
— To think and read and write;
He does not smell the new-mown hay,
— The roses red and white.

I walk among them all alone,
— His silly, stupid wife;
The world seems tasteless, dead and done —
— An empty thing is life.

At night his window casts a square
— Of light upon the lawn;
I sometimes walk and watch it there
— Until the chill of dawn.

I have no brain to understand
— The books he loves to read;
I only have a heart and hand
— He does not seem to need.

Amo, Amas, I love a lass
As a cedar tall and slender;
Sweet cowslip's grace is her nominative case,
And she's of the feminine gender.

Rorum, Corum, sunt divorum,
Harum, Scarum divo;
Tag-rag, merry-derry, periwig and hat-band
Hic hoc horum genitivo.

Can I decline a Nymph divine?
Her voice as a flute is dulcis.
Her oculus bright, her manus white,
And soft, when I tacto, her pulse is.

Rorum, Corum, sunt divorum,
Harum, Scarum divo;
Tag-rag, merry-derry, periwig and hat-band
Hic hoc horum genitivo.

A LONG the garden ways just now
— I heard the flowers speak;
The white rose told me of your brow,
— The red rose of your cheek;
The lily of your bended head,
— The bindweed of your hair;
Each looked its loveliest and said
— You were more fair.

I went into the wood anon,
— And heard the wild birds sing,
How sweet you were, they warbled on,
— Piped, trilled, the selfsame thing.
Thrush, blackbird, linnet, without pause
— The burden did repeat,
And still began again because
— You were more sweet.

All other love is like the moone
That wexth and waneth as flowr in plain,
As flowr that faireth and falweth soone,
As day that clereth and endth in rain.

All other love biginth by blisse,
In wop and wo makth his ending;
No love ther n'is that evre habbe lisse
But what areste in Hevene-King,
Whos love is fresh and evre greene
And evre full without wanying;
His love sweeteth withoute teene,
His love is endless and a-ring.

All other love I flee for thee;
Tell me, tell me where thou list.
" In Marie mild and free

All loved and lovely women dear to rhyme:
Thais, Cassandra, Helen and their fames,
Burn like tall candles through forgotten time,
Lighting the Past's dim arras with their names.
Around their faces wars the eager dark
Wherein all other lights are sunken now,
Yet, casting back, the seeker still may mark
A flame of hair, a bright immortal brow.

Surely, where they have passed, one after one,
Wearing their radiance to the darkened room, —
Surely, newcomers to Oblivion
May still descry in that all-quenching gloom,

Alberta, lovely little dame,
Of thee I'm thinking ever;
Oh, little witch, with eyes of sloe!
Thou haunts me, wheresoe'er I go,
And grants a respite, never;
A victim of thy spell I be,
A bondman, robbed of liberty:
Show quarter now, and pity me,
O, fair Alberta.

Thy solemn eyes, are hid from sight
By dark-fringed, dusky, curtains;
Oh, lift thy orbs, up unto mine,
And let one ray of love light shine,
To make my faint hopes certain;
Oh, from suspense, and misery,
Let but a frank smile set me free,

Alas, my heart! mine eye hath wrongid thee,
Presumptuous eye, to gaze on Phyllis' face,
Whose heavenly eye no mortal man may see
But he must die, or purchase Phyllis' grace.
Poor Corydon! the nymph, whose eye doth move thee,
Doth love to draw, but is not drawn to love thee.

Her beauty, Nature's pride and shepherds' praise;
Her eye, the heavenly planet of my life;
Her matchless wit and grace her fame displays,
As if that Jove had made her for his wife:
Only her eyes shoot fiery darts to kill,
Yet is her heart as cold as Caucase hill.

A LAS for me, who loved a falcon well!
So well I loved him, I was nearly dead:
Ever at my low call he bent his head,
And ate of mine, not much, but all that fell.
Now he has fled, how high I cannot tell,
Much higher now than ever he has fled,
And is in a fair garden housed and fed;
Another lady, alas! shall love him well.
Oh, my own falcon whom I taught and rear'd!
Sweet bells of shining gold I gave to thee
That in the chase thou shouldst not be afeard.
Now thou hast risen like the risen sea,
Broken thy jesses loose, and disappear'd,

Alas! alas! thou turn'st in vain
Thy beauteous face away,
Which, like young sorcerers, rais'd a pain
Above its power to lay.

Love moves not as thou turn'st thy look,
But here doth firmly rest:
He long ago thine eyes forsook
To revel in my breast.

Thy power on him why hop'st thou more
Than his on me should be?
The claim thou lay'st to him is poor
To that he owns from me.

His substance in my heart excels,
His shadow, in thy sight;
Fire where it burns more truly dwells
Than where it scatters light.