Leaning her head upon my breast,
There on love's bed she lay to rest;
My panting heart rock'd her asleep,
My heedful eyes the watch did keep;
Then, love by me being harbour'd there,
(No hope to be his harbinger)
Desire his rival kept the door;
For this of him I begg'd no more,
But that, our mistress to entertain,
Some pretty fancy he would frame,
And represent it in a dream,
Of which myself should give the theme.
Then first these thoughts I bid him show,
Which only he and I did know,
Arrayed in duty and respect,

This love of nature, that allures to take
Irregularity for harmony
Of larger scope than our hard measures make,
Cherish it as thy school for when on thee
The ills of life descend.

Reject me not if I should say to you
I do forget the sounding of your voice,
I do forget your eyes, that searching through
The days perceive our marriage, and rejoice.

But, when the apple-blossom opens wide
Under the pallid moonlight's fingering,
I see your blanched face at my breast, and hide
My eyes from duteous work, malingering.

Ah, then upon the bedroom I do draw
The blind to hide the garden, where the moon
Enjoys the open blossoms as they straw
Their beauty for his taking, boon for boon.

Behold, my Love, how green the groves,
The primrose banks how fair;
The balmy gales awake the flowers,
And wave thy flaxen hair:
The lavrock shuns the palace gay,
And o'er the cottage sings;
For Nature smiles as sweet, I ween,
To shepherds as to kings.—

Let minstrels sweep the skillfu' string,
In lordly, lighted ha';
The shepherd stops his simple reed,
Blythe, in the birken shaw:
The princely revel may survey
Our rustic dance wi' scorn,
But are their hearts as light as ours
Beneath the milkwhite thorn.—

O Lovely One, when to the ravished sight
Thou wilt unveil that radiant face of thine,
Each atom of the worlds, catching thy light,
Reflecting thee, bright as a sun shall shine.

Walk not, my flower, within the garden close,
Lest thou should give the the bulbul new distress;
For at thy glance each blossom turns a rose
To lure him with her cruel loveliness.

Victorious One, thou hast unsheathed thy sword,
The scimitar of thy beauty gleams again,
So over all thy lovers thou art Lord,
Holding dominion in the hearts of men.

No wonder they made him blind—
Cupid—and gave him arrows.
In two strokes, so, they defined
the odds of love and the sorrows.

The energy of desire
confronts the Probable—
so random, though, in its fire
a queen may well love a bull,

or an old man a child.
A barb is no less a curse
that the archer shot it wild.
You can't yank in reverse

without doubling the cut,
nor push through as it's sent—
for less than your life—what
arrived by accident.

Passionate light that lingers in the west,
Lovelier growing as the moments pass,
Must thou depart at rigorous night's behest?
Alas!

The hosts of darkness fill heaven's eastern plain,
Great swelling clouds in triumph, lo! they ride,
Yet thou thine amorous beauty dost disdain
To hide.

While far above, faint wayward cloudlets glow
Like radiant moments seen by memory:
Love's envoys, they are fain to fade and go
With thee.

Tender as every sense at parting is,
The tremulous sky grows pale as death above,

O she's a girl of winsome face,
A maid of fairest mould, O,
And all her garments fall with grace
In ev'ry bending fold, O.
My heart it leaps to see her walk,
So stately step her feet, O,
My tongue is dumb to hear her talk,
Her voice it sounds so sweet, O,
For oh! she seems to my poor mind
The very pride of womankind.

Whene'er she sits, she sitting seems
The fairest to the sight, O;
She rises up and then one deems
She's fairest at her height, O.
Whene'er I see her in a room
I think her fairest there, O,

Not endless life, but endless love, I crave,
The gladness and the calm of holier springs,
The hope that makes men resolute and brave,
The joyful life in the great Life of Things.

And then one morning
surprised
I found myself
at the brink of wisdom
having forgotten love.