At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited.
—Thomas Hardy, The Darkling Thrust
A boy?s will is the wind?s will
And the thoughts of youth are long long thoughts.
—Wadsworth Longfellow, My Lost Youth
Have mercy, swete herte myn, Chriseyde! And if that, in the wordes that I seyde Be any wrong, I wol no more trespace;
晚春
草树知春不久归,百般红紫斗芳菲。 杨花榆英无才思,唯解漫天作雪飞。
—韩愈
Sometimes when I?m lonely, Don?t know why,
Keep thinking I won?t be lonely By and by.
—Langston Hughs, Hope
My Papa’s Waltz The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother?s countenance Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed
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My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.? —Theodore Roethke
Never Give All the Heart
Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seems Certain, and they never dream
That they fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that?s lovely is But a brief, dreamy, kind delight. O never give the heart outright, For they, for all smooth lips can say, Have given their hearts up to the play. And who could play it well enough If deaf and dumb and blind with love? He that made this knows all the cost, For he gave all his heart and lost.
—William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
With Rue My Heart Is Laden With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.
My brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid; The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.
—Alfred Housman
The Night Hasa Thousand Eyes The night has a thousand eyes
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And the day but one
Yet the light of the bright world dies With the dying sun
The mind has a thousand eyes And the heart but one
Yet the light of a whole life dies When love is done
—Francis William Bourdillon
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls, to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say, ?The breath goes now,? and some say, ?No:?
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; T?were profanation of our joys To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th? earth brings harms and fears; Men reckon what it did, and meant; But trepidation of the spheres, Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers? love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refin?d, That ourselves know not what it is, Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat.
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If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fix?d foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the? other do.
And though it in the centre sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must Like th? other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end, where I begun. —John Donne
Jenny Kiss’d Me
Jenny kiss?d me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in; Time, you thief, who love to get Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I?m weary, say I?m sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss?d me,
Say I?m growing old, but add, Jenny kiss?d me.
—Leigh Hunt
When You Are Old
When you are old and gray and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
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And bending down beside the glowing bars. Murmur a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. —William Butler Yeats
Love Is Fire
Yet love, mere love, is beautiful indeed And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright, Let temple burn,or flax. An equal light
Leeps in the flame from cedar plank or weed. And love is fire; and when I say at need.
I love thee…mark! …I love thee…in the sight I stand transfigured, glorified aright,
With conscience of the new rays that proceed Out of my face toward thine, There?s nothing low In love, when love the lowest; meanest creatures Who love God, God accepts while loving so. And what I feel, across the inferior features Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show
How the great work of Love enhances nature?s.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man?s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly;
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho the holly! This life is most jolly!
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, Thou dost not bite so nigh As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
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