"A Place in Thy Memory" 871 LOVE NOT Love not, love not, ye hapless sons of clay! Hope's gayest wreaths are made of earthly flowersThings that are made to fade and fall away, When they have blossomed but a few short hours. Love not, love not! The thing you love may die- Love not, love not! The thing you love may change, The kindly beaming eye grow cold and strange; Love not, love not! O warning vainly said Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton [1808-1877] "A PLACE IN THY MEMORY" A PLACE in thy memory, Dearest! Is all that I claim: To pause and look back when thou hearest The sound of my name. Another may woo thee, nearer; Another may win and wear: Remember me, not as a lover Whose bosom can never recover As the young bride remembers the mother As a sister remembers a brother, O Dearest, remember me! Could I be thy true lover, Dearest!. I would be the fondest and nearest But a cloud on my pathway is glooming Remember me then! O remember Though bleak as the blasts of November That life will, though lonely, be sweet If its brightest enjoyment should be Gerald Griffin [1803-1840] INCLUSIONS OH, wilt thou have my hand, Dear, to lie along in thine? As a little stone in a running stream, it seems to lie and pine. Now drop the poor pale hand, Dear, unfit to plight with thine. Oh, wilt thou have my cheek, Dear, drawn closer to thine own? My cheek is white, my cheek is worn, by many a tear run down. Now leave a little space, Dear, lest it should wet thine own. Oh, must thou have my soul, Dear, commingled with thy soul? Red grows the cheek, and warm the hand; the part is in the whole; Nor hands nor cheeks keep separate, when soul is joined to soul. Elizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861] MARIANA e.-MEASURE For Measure Mariana in the moated grange.— WITH blackest moss the flower-plots Upon the lonely moated grange. She only said, "My life is dreary, He cometh not," she said; Her tears fell with the dews at even; Her tears fell ere the dews were dried; After the flitting of the bats, When thickest dark did trance the sky, She said, "I am aweary, aweary, Upon the middle of the night, Waking she heard the night-fowl crow: From the dark fen the oxen's low Came to her: without hope of change, In sleep she seemed to walk forlorn, Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn About the lonely moated grange. She only said, "The day is dreary, He cometh not," she said; About a stone-cast from the wall A sluice with blackened waters slept, And o'er it many, round and small, The clustered marish-mosses crept. Hard by a poplar shook alway, All silver-green with gnarlèd bark: She only said, "My life is dreary, And ever when the moon was low, And the shrill winds were up and away, In the white curtain, to and fro, She saw the gusty shadow sway, But when the moon was very low, And wild winds bound within their cell, The shadow of the poplar fell Upon her bed, across her brow. She only said, "The night is dreary He cometh not," she said; She said, "I am aweary, aweary, All day within the dreamy house, The doors upon their hinges creaked; The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse Behind the moldering wainscot shrieked, "Ask Me No More" Or from the crevice peered about. She only said, "My life is dreary, The sparrow's chirrup on the roof, The poplar made, did all confound 875 Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] "ASK ME NO MORE" From "The Princess" Ask me no more: the moon may draw the sea; The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shape, But O too fond, when have I answered thee? Ask me no more: what answer should I give? |