BEST LOVED POEMS Read online

  On desperate seas long wont to roam,

  Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

  Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home

  To the glory that was Greece

  And the grandeur that was Rome.

  Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche

  How statue-like I see thee stand,

  The agate lamp within thy hand!

  Ah, Psyche, from the regions which

  Are Holy Land!

  EDGAR ALLAN POE

  FIDELIS You have taken back the promise

  That you spoke so long ago;

  Taken back the heart you gave

  I must even let it go.

  Where Love once has breathed, Pride dieth;

  So I struggle, but in vain

  First to keep the links together,

  Then to piece the broken chain.

  But it might not be—so freely

  All your friendship I restore,

  And the heart that I had taken

  As my own forevermore.

  No shade of reproach shall touch you,

  Dread no more a claim from me—

  But I will not have you fancy

  That I count myself as free.

  I am bound by the old promise;

  What can break that golden chain?

  Not even the words that you have spoken,

  Or the sharpness of my pain:

  Do you think, because you fail me

  And draw back your hand today,

  That from out the heart I gave you

  My strong love can fade away?

  It will live. No eyes may see it;

  In my soul it will lie deep,

  Hidden from all; but I shall feel it

  Often stirring in its sleep.

  So remember that the friendship

  Which you now think poor and vain,

  Will endure in hope and patience,

  Till you ask for it again.

  Perhaps in some long twilight hour,

  Like those we have known of old,

  When past shadows gather round you,

  And your present friends grow cold,

  You may stretch your hands out towards me—

  Ah! You will—I know not when—

  I shall nurse my love and keep it

  Faithfully, for you, till then.

  ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER

  AN OLD SWEETHEART OF MINE An old sweetheart of mine! — Is this her presence here with me,

  Or but a vain creation of a lover’s memory?

  A fair, illusive vision that would vanish into air,

  Dared I even touch the silence with the whisper of a prayer?

  Nay, let me then believe in all the blended false and true—

  The semblance of the old love and the substance of the new,—

  The then of changeless sunny days—the now of shower and shine—

  But Love forever smiling—as that old sweetheart of mine.

  This ever restful sense of home though shouts ring in the hall,—

  The easy chair—the old book-shelves and prints along the wall;

  The rare Habanas in their box, or gaunt churchwarden-stem

  That often wags, above the jar, derisively at them.

  As one who cons at evening o’er an album, all alone,

  And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known,

  So I turn the leaves of Fancy, till, in a shadowy design,

  I find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine.

  The lamplight seems to glimmer with a flicker of surprise,

  As I turn it low—to rest me of the dazzle in my eyes,

  And light my pipe in silence, save a sigh that seems to yoke

  Its fate with my tobacco and to vanish with the smoke.

  ’Tis a fragrant retrospection,—for the loving thoughts that start

  Into being are like perfume from the blossom of the heart;

  And to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine—

  When my truant fancies wander with that old sweetheart of mine.

  Though I hear beneath my study, like a fluttering of wings,

  The voices of my children and the mother as she sings—

  I feel no twinge of conscience to deny me any theme

  When Care has cast her anchor in the harbor of a dream—

  In fact, to speak in earnest, I believe it adds a charm

  To spice the good a trifle with a little dust of harm,—

  For I find an extra flavor in Memory’s mellow wine

  That makes me drink the deeper to that old sweetheart of mine.

  O Childhood-days enchanted! O the magic of the Spring!—

  With all green boughs to blossom white, and all bluebirds to sing

  When all the air, to toss and quaff, made life a jubilee

  And changed the children’s song and laugh to shrieks of ecstasy.

  With eyes half closed in clouds that ooze from lips that taste, as well

  The peppermint and cinnamon, I hear the old school bell,

  And from “Recess” romp in again from “Blackman’s” broken line

  To smile, behind my “lesson”, at that old sweetheart of mine.

  A face of lily beauty, with a form of airy grace,

  Float out of my tobacco as the Genii from the vase;

  And I thrill beneath the glances of a pair of azure eyes

  As glowing as the summer and as tender as the skies.

  I can see the pink sunbonnet and the little checkered dress

  She wore when first I kissed her and she answered the caress

  With the written declaration that, “as surely as the vine

  Grew ‘round the stump” she loved me—that old sweetheart of mine.

  Again I made her presents, in a really helpless way,—

  The big “Rhode Island Greening”—I was hungry, too, that day!—

  But I follow her from Spelling, with her hand behind her—so—

  And I slip the apple in it—and the Teacher doesn’t know!

  I give my treasures to her—all,—my pencil—blue and red;—

  And, if little girls played marbles, mine should all be hers, instead!

  But she gave me her photograph, and printed “Ever Thine”

  Across the back—in blue and red—that old sweetheart of mine!

  And again I feel the pressure of her slender little hand,

  As we used to talk together of the future we had planned,—

  When I should be a poet, and with nothing else to do

  But write the tender verses that she set the music to …

  Then we should live together in a cozy little cot

  Hid in a nest of roses, with a fairy garden spot,

  Where the vines were ever fruited, and the weather ever fine,

  And the birds were ever singing for that old sweetheart of mine.

  When I should be her lover forever and a day,

  And she my faithful sweetheart till the golden hair was gray;

  And we should be so happy that when either’s lips were dumb

  They would not smile in Heaven till the other’s kiss had come.

  But, ah! my dream is broken by a step upon the stair,

  And the door is softly opened, and—my wife is standing there;

  Yet with eagerness and rapture all my vision I resign,—

  To greet the living presence of that old sweetheart of mine.

  JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

  WHEN I AM DEAD,

  MY DEAREST When I am dead, my dearest,

  Sing no sad songs for me;

  Plant thou no roses at my head,

  Nor shady cypress tree:

  Be the green grass above me

  With showers and dewdrops wet:

  And if thou wilt, remember,

  And if thou wilt, forget.

  I shall not see the shadows,

  I shall not feel the rain;

  I shall not hear the nightingale

  Sing on, as if
in pain:

  And dreaming through the twilight

  That doth not rise nor set,

  Haply I may remember,

  And haply may forget.

  CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI

  REMEMBER Remember me when I am gone away,

  Gone far away into the silent land;

  When you can no more hold me by the hand,

  Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.

  Remember me when no more, day by day,

  You tell me of our future that you planned:

  Only remember me; you understand

  It will be late to counsel then or pray.

  Yet if you should forget me for a while

  And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

  For if the darkness and corruption leave

  A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

  Better by far you should forget and smile

  Than that you should remember and be sad.

  CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI

  MIDSUMMER You loved me for a little,

  Who could not love me long;

  You gave me wings of gladness

  And lent my spirit song,

  You loved me for an hour

  But only with your eyes;

  Your lips I could not capture

  By storm or by surprise.

  Your mouth that I remember

  With rush of sudden pain

  As one remembers starlight

  Or roses after rain …

  Out of a world of laughter

  Suddenly I am sad …

  Day and night it haunts me,

  The kiss I never had.

  SYDNEY KING RUSSELL

  OUR OWN If I had known in the morning

  How wearily all the day

  The words unkind would trouble my mind

  That I said when you went away,

  I had been more careful, darling,

  Nor given you needless pain;

  But we vex our own with look and tone

  We may never take back again.

  For though in the quiet evening

  You may give me the kiss of peace,

  Yet it well might be that never for me

  The pain of the heart should cease!

  How many go forth at morning

  Who never come home at night!

  And hearts have broken for harsh words spoken

  That sorrow can ne’er set right.

  We have careful thought for the stranger,

  And smiles for the sometime guest;

  But oft for “our own” the bitter tone,

  Though we love our own the best.

  Ah! lips with the curve impatient,

  Ah! brow with the shade of scorn,

  ‘Twere a cruel fate, were the night too late

  To undo the work of the morn!

  MARGARET E. SANGSTER

  HOW I LOVE YOU My eyes! how I love you,

  You sweet little dove you!

  There’s no one above you,

  Most beautiful Kitty.

  So glossy your hair is,

  Like a sylph’s or a fairy’s;

  And your neck, I declare, is

  Exquisitely pretty.

  Quite Grecian your nose is,

  And your cheeks are like roses,

  So delicious—O Moses!

  Surpassingly sweet!

  Not the beauty of tulips,

  Nor the taste of mint-juleps,

  Can compare with your two lips,

  Most beautiful Kate!

  Not the black eyes of Juno,

  Nor Minerva’s of blue, no,

  Nor Venus’s, you know,

  Can equal your own!

  O, how my heart prances,

  And frolics and dances,

  When its radiant glances

  Upon me are thrown!

  And now, dearest Kitty,

  It’s not very pretty,

  Indeed it’s a pity,

  To keep me in sorrow!

  So, if you’ll but chime in;

  We’ll have done with our rhymin’,

  Swap Cupid for Hymen,

  And be married to-morrow.

  JOHN GODFREY SAXE

  WHO IS SYLVIA? Who is Sylvia? what is she,

  That all our swains commend her?

  Holy, fair, and wise is she;

  The heavens such grace did lend her

  That she might admired be.

  Is she kind, as she is fair?

  For beauty lives with kindness.

  Love does to her eyes repair

  To help him of his blindness—

  And, being help’d, inhabits there.

  Then to Sylvia let us sing

  That Sylvia is excelling;

  She excels each mortal thing

  Upon the dull earth dwelling;

  To her let us garlands bring.

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  SONNET Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

  Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

  And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

  Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

  And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;

  And every fair from fair sometime declines,

  By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;

  But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

  Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,

  Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

  When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;

  So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  ONE WORD IS TOO

  OFTEN PROFANED One word is too often profaned

  For me to profane it,

  One feeling too falsely disdained

  For thee to disdain it.

  One hope is too like despair

  For prudence to smother,

  And pity from thee more dear

  Than that from another.

  I can give not what men call love;

  But wilt thou accept not

  The worship the heart lifts above

  And the heavens reject not;

  The desire of the moth for the star,

  Of the night for the morrow.

  The devotion to something afar

  From the sphere of our sorrow?

  PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

  LOVE’S PHILOSOPHY The fountains mingle with the river,

  And the rivers with the ocean;

  The winds of heaven mix forever,

  With a sweet emotion;

  Nothing in the world is single;

  All things by a law divine

  In one another’s being mingle:—

  Why not I with thine?

  See! the mountains kiss high heaven,

  And the waves clasp one another;

  No sister flower would be forgiven

  If it disdained its brother;

  And the sunlight clasps the earth,

  And the moonbeams kiss the sea:—

  What are all these kissings worth,

  If thou kiss not me?

  PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

  LINES TO AN INDIAN AIR I arise from dreams of thee

  In the first sweet sleep of night,

  When the winds are breathing low,

  And the stars are shining bright;

  I arise from dreams of thee,

  And a spirit in my feet

  Has led me—who knows how?—

  To thy chamber-window, sweet!

  The wandering airs they faint

  On the dark, the silent stream—

  The champak odors fail

  Like sweet thoughts in a dream;

  The nightingale’s complaint,

  It dies upon her heart,

  As I must on thine,

  Beloved as thou art!

  Oh lift me f
rom the grass!

  I die, I faint, I fail!

  Let thy love in kisses rain

  On my lips and eyelids pale.

  My cheek is cold and white, alas!

  My heart beats loud and fast,

  Oh! press it close to thine again,

  Where it will break at last.

  PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

  KISSES My love and I for kisses play’d:

  She would keep stakes—I was content;

  But when I won, she would be paid;

  This made me ask her what she meant.

  “Pray, since I see,” quoth she, “your wrangling vein,

  Take your own kisses; give me mine again.”

  WILLIAM STRODE

  THE CONSTANT LOVER Why so pale and wan, fond lover?

  Prithee, why so pale?

  Will, when looking well can’t move her,

  Looking ill prevail?

  Prithee, why so pale?

  Why so dull and mute, young sinner?

  Prithee, why so mute?

  Will, when speaking well can’t win her,

  Saying nothing do’t?

  Prithee, why so mute?

  Quit, quit, for shame! this will not move,

  This cannot take her;

  If of herself she will not love,

  Nothing can make her:

  The Devil take her!

  SIR JOHN SUCKLING

  AFTER LOVE Oh, to part now, and, parting now,

  Never to meet again;

  To have done forever, I and thou,

  With joy, and so with pain.

  It is too hard, too hard to meet

  If we must love no more;

  Those other meetings were too sweet

  That went before.

  And I would have, now love is over,

  An end to all, an end;

  I cannot, having been your lover,

  Stoop to become your friend!

  ARTHUR SYMONS

  BEDOUIN SONG From the desert I come to thee,

  On a stallion shod with fire;

  And the winds are left behind

  In the speed of my desire.

  Under thy window I stand,

  And the midnight hears my cry:

  I love thee, I love but thee,