Volume Ii Part 96 (2/2)
But I will marry my own first love, With her primrose face: for old things are best, And the flower in her bosom, I prize it above The brooch in my lady's breast.
The world is filled with folly and sin, And Love must cling where it can, I say: For Beauty is easy enough to win; But one isn't loved every day.
And I think, in the lives of most women and men, There's a moment when all would go smooth and even, If only the dead could find out when To come back, and be forgiven.
But O the smell of that jasmine-flower!
And O that music! and O the way That voice rang out from the donjon tower, Non ti scordar di me, Non ti scordar di me!
Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton [1831-1891]
SONG
I saw the day's white rapture Die in the sunset's flame, But all her s.h.i.+ning beauty Lives like a deathless name.
Our lamps of joy are wasted, Gone is Love's hallowed light; But you and I remember Through every starlit night.
Charles Hanson Towne [1877-
THE LONELY ROAD
I think thou waitest, Love, beyond the Gate-- Eager, with wind-stirred ripples in thy hair; I have not found thee, and the hour is late, And harsh the weight I bear.
Far have I sought, and flung my wealth of years Like a young traveler, gay at careless inns-- See how the wine-stain whitens 'neath the tears My burden wins!
And wilt thou know me, Love, with bended back, Or wilt thou scorn me, in so drear a guise?
I have a wealth of sorrows in my pack, One lonely prize--
Thy dream--and dross of sin.... O, dim the fields-- I may not find thee in so dark a land-- Yet I await what hope the turning yields And beg with empty hand.
Kenneth Rand [1891-
EVENSONG
Beauty calls and gives no warning, Shadows rise and wander on the day.
In the twilight, in the quiet evening, We shall rise and smile and go away.
Over the flaming leaves Freezes the sky.
It is the season grieves, Not you, not I.
All our spring-times, all our summers, We have kept the longing warm within.
Now we leave the after-comers To attain the dreams we did not win.
Oh, we have wakened, Sweet, and had our birth, And that's the end of earth; And we have toiled and smiled and kept the light, And that's the end of night.
Ridgely Torrence [1875-
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