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O my earliest love, who, ere I number'd
Ten sweet summers, made my bosom thrill!
Will a swallow - or a swift, or some bird -
Fly to her and say, I love her still?

Say my life's a desert drear and arid,...

BOOK II.


Sweet, when the great sea's water is stirred to his depths by the storm- winds,
Standing ashore to descry one afar-off mightily struggling:...

FROM 'REJECTED ADDRESSES.'



Balmy Zephyrs, lightly flitting,
Shade me with your azure wing;
On Parnassus' summit sitting,
Aid me, Clio, while I sing.
...

FELICIA HEMANS.



Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the North-wind's breath,
And stars to set: but all,
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!
...

R. C. TRENCH.



"Let us turn hitherward our bark," they cried,
"And, 'mid the blisses of this happy isle,
Past toil forgetting and to come, abide
In joyfulness awhile.
...

Grinder, who serenely grindest
At my door the Hundredth Psalm,
Till thou ultimately findest
Pence in thy unwashen palm:

Grinder, jocund-hearted Grinder,
Near whom Barbary's nimble son,...

Ere the morn the East has crimsoned,
When the stars are twinkling there,
(As they did in Watts's Hymns, and
Made him wonder what they were:)
When the forest-nymphs are beading...

Canst thou love me, lady?
I've not learn'd to woo:
Thou art on the shady
Side of sixty too.
Still I love thee dearly!
Thou hast lands and pelf:
But I love thee merely
Merely for thyself.
...

In moss-prankt dells which the sunbeams flatter
(And heaven it knoweth what that may mean:
Meaning, however, is no great matter)
Where woods are a-tremble, with rifts atween;
...

Yet once more, O ye laurels! and once more
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year....

OD. i. 11.


Seek not, for thou shalt not find it, what my end, what thine shall be;
Ask not of Chaldaea's science what God wills, Leuconoe:
Better far, what comes, to bear it. Haply many a wintry blast...

OD. iv. 13.


Lyce, the gods have listened to my prayer;
The gods have listened, Lyce. Thou art grey,
And still would'st thou seem fair;
Still unshamed drink, and play,
...