The Earth has drunk the vintage up; What boots it patch the goblet's splinters? Can Summer fill the icy cup Whose treacherous crystal is but Winter's?
O spendthrift haste! await the Gods; Their nectar crowns the lips of Patience; Haste scatters on unthankful sods The immortal gift in vain libations.
Coy Hebe flies from those that woo, And shuns the hands would seize upon her; Follow thy life, and she will sue To pour for thee the cup of honor.
James Russell Lowell [1819-1891]
"JUSTINE, YOU LOVE ME NOT!" "Helas! vous ne m'aimez pas." - Piron
I know, Justine, you speak me fair As often as we meet; And 'tis a luxury, I swear, To hear a voice so sweet; And yet it does not please me quite, The civil way you've got; For me you're something too polite - Justine, you love me not!
I know Justine, you never scold At aught that I may do: If I am passionate or cold, 'Tis all the same to you. "A charming temper," say the men, "To smooth a husband's lot": I wish 'twere ruffled now and then - Justine you love me not!
I know, Justine, you wear a smile As beaming as the sun; But who supposes all the while It shines for only one? Though azure skies are fair to see, A transient cloudy spot In yours would promise more to me - Justine, you love me not!
I know, Justine, you make my name Your eulogistic theme, And say - if any chance to blame - You hold me in esteem. Such words, for all their kindly scope, Delight me not a jot; Just as you would have praised the Pope - Justine, you love me not!
I know, Justine - for I have heard What friendly voices tell - You do not blush to say the word, "You like me passing well"; And thus the fatal sound I hear That seals my lonely lot: There's nothing now to hope or fear - Justine, you love me not!
John Godfrey Saxe [1816-1887]
SNOWDROP
When, full of warm and eager love, I clasp you in my fond embrace, You gently push me back and say, "Take care, my dear, you'll spoil my lace."
You kiss me just as you would kiss Some woman friend you chanced to see; You call me "dearest." - All love's forms Are yours, not its reality.
Oh, Annie! cry, and storm, and rave! Do anything with passion in it! Hate me an hour, and then turn round And love me truly, just one minute.
William Wetmore Story [1819-1895]
WHEN THE SULTAN GOES TO ISPAHAN
When the Sultan Shah-Zaman Goes to the city Ispahan, Even before he gets so far As the place where the clustered palm-trees are, At the last of the thirty palace-gates, The flower of the harem, Rose-in-Bloom, Orders a feast in his favorite room - Glittering squares of colored ice, Sweetened with syrop, tinctured with spice, Creams, and cordials, and sugared dates, Syrian apples, Othmanee quinces, Limes, and citrons, and apricots, And wines that are known to Eastern princes; And Nubian slaves, with smoking pots Of spiced meats and costliest fish And all that the curious palate could wish, Pass in and out of the cedarn doors; Scattered over mosaic floors Are anemones, myrtles, and violets, And a musical fountain throws its jets Of a hundred colors into the air. The dusk Sultana loosens her hair, And stains with the henna-plant the tips Of her pointed nails, and bites her lips Till they bloom again; but, alas, that rose Not for the Sultan buds and blows, Not for the Sultan Shah-Zaman When he goes to the city Ispahan.
Then at a wave of her sunny hand The dancing-girls of Samarcand Glide in like shapes from fairy-land, Making a sudden mist in air Of fleecy veils and floating hair And white arms lifted. Orient blood Runs in their veins, shines in their eyes. And there, in this Eastern Paradise, Filled with the breath of sandal-wood, And Khoten musk, and aloes and myrrh, Sits Rose-in-Bloom on a silk divan, Sipping the wines of Astrakhan; And her Arab lover sits with her. That's when the Sultan Shah-Zaman Goes to the city Ispahan.
Now, when I see an extra light, Flaming, flickering on the night From my neighbor's casement opposite, I know as well as I know to pray, I know as well as a tongue can say, That the innocent Sultan Shah-Zaman Has gone to the city Ispahan.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich [1837-1907]
THE SHADOW DANCE
She sees her image in the glass, - How fair a thing to gaze upon! She lingers while the moments run, With happy thoughts that come and pass,
Like winds across the meadow grass When the young June is just begun: She sees her image in the glass, - How fair a thing to gaze upon!
What wealth of gold the skies amass! How glad are all things 'neath the sun! How true the love her love has won! She recks not that this hour will pass, - She sees her image in the glass.
Louise Chandler Moulton [1835-1908]
"ALONG THE FIELD AS WE CAME BY"
Along the field as we came by A year ago, my love and I, The aspen over stile and stone Was talking to itself alone. "Oh, who are these that kiss and pass? A country lover and his lass; Two lovers looking to be wed; And time shall put them both to bed, But she shall lie with earth above, And he beside another love."
And sure enough beneath the tree There walks another love with me, And overhead the aspen heaves Its rainy-sounding silver leaves; And I spell nothing in their stir, But now perhaps they speak to her, And plain for her to understand They talk about a time at hand When I shall sleep with clover clad, And she beside another lad.
Alfred Edward Housman [1859-1936]
"WHEN I WAS ONE-AND-TWENTY"
When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, "Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies But keep your fancy free." But I was one-and-twenty, No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty I heard him say again, "The heart out of the bosom Was never given in vain; 'Tis paid with sighs a plenty And sold for endless rue." And I am two-and-twenty, And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.
Alfred Edward Housman [1859-1936]
"GRIEVE NOT, LADIES"
Oh, grieve not, Ladies, if at night Ye wake to feel your beauty going; It was a web of frail delight, Inconstant as an April snowing.
In other eyes, in other lands, In deep fair pools new beauty lingers; But like spent water in your hands It runs from your reluctant fingers.
You shall not keep the singing lark That owes to earlier skies its duty. Weep not to hear along the dark The sound of your departing beauty.
The fine and anguished ear of night Is tuned to hear the smallest sorrow: Oh, wait until the morning light! It may not seem so gone to-morrow.
But honey-pale and rosy-red! Brief lights that make a little shining! Beautiful looks about us shed - They leave us to the old repining.
Think not the watchful, dim despair Has come to you the first, sweet-hearted! For oh, the gold in Helen's hair! And how she cried when that departed!
Perhaps that one that took the most, The swiftest borrower, wildest spender, May count, as we would not, the cost - And grow more true to us and tender.
Happy are we if in his eyes We see no shadow of forgetting. Nay - if our star sinks in those skies We shall not wholly see its setting.
Then let us laugh as do the brooks, That such immortal youth is ours, If memory keeps for them our looks As fresh as are the springtime flowers.
So grieve not, Ladies, if at night Ye wake to feel the cold December! Rather recall the early light, And in your loved one's arms, remember.
Anna Hempstead Branch [18
SUBURB
Dull and hard the low wind creaks Among the rustling pampas plumes. Drearily the year consumes Its fifty-two insipid weeks.
Most of the gray-green meadow land Was sold in parsimonious lots; The dingy houses stand Pressed by some stout contractor's hand Tightly together in their plots.
Through builded banks the sullen river Gropes, where its houses crouch and shiver. Over the bridge the tyrant train Shrieks, and emerges on the plain.
In all the better gardens you may pass, (Product of many careful Saturdays), Large red geraniums and tall pampas grass Adorn the plots and mark the gravelled ways.
Sometimes in the background may be seen A private summer-house in white or green. Here on warm nights the daughter brings Her vacillating clerk, To talk of small exciting things And touch his fingers through the dark.
He, in the uncomfortable breach Between her trilling laughters, Promises, in halting speech, Hopeless immense Hereafters.
She trembles like the pampas plumes. Her strained lips haggle. He assumes The serious quest. . . .
Now as the train is whistling past He takes her in his arms at last.
It's done. She blushes at his side Across the lawn - a bride, a bride.
. . . . . . . .
The stout contractor will design, The lazy laborers will prepare, Another villa on the line; In the little garden-square Pampas grass will rustle there.
Harold Monro [1879-1932]
THE BETROTHED "You must choose between me and your cigar" - Breach of Promise case, circa 1885.
Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout, For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.
We quarreled about Havanas - we fought o'er a good cheroot - And I know she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.
Open the old cigar-box - let me consider a space, In the soft blue veil of the vapor, musing on Maggie's face.