LOVED ONCE. How say ye, "We loved once," Blasphemers? Is your earth not cold enow, Ah, friends! and would ye wrong each other so? Whose prayers have met your own, 267 Whose tears have fallen for you, whose smiles have shone, Such words, "We loved them once?" Could ye "We loved her once" Say calm of me, sweet friends, when out of sight? When hearts of better right Stand in between me and your happy light? And when, as flowers kept too long in shade, Ye find my colours fade, And all that is not love in me, decayed? Could ye "We loved her once" Say cold of me, when further put away In earth's sepulchral clay? When mute the lips which deprecate to day?— Of those who sit and love you up in heaven Say not, "We loved them once." Say never, ye loved once! God is too near above, the grave beneath, Too quick in mysteries of life and death, There comes no change to justify that change, 268 VIVIEN'S SONG. And yet that same word "once" Is humanly acceptive! Kings have said, "We ruled once;"-dotards, "We once taught and led;"— Cripples once danced i' the vines; and bards approved Were once by scornings moved; But love strikes one hour-love. Those never loved Who dream that they loved once. E. B. Browning. VIVIEN'S SONG. IN love, if love be love, if love be ours, It is the little rift within the lute, That by and by will make the music mute, The little rift within the lover's lute, It is not worth the keeping; let it go: A. Tennyson. ELAINE'S SONG. 269 ELAINE'S SONG. "SWEET is true love tho' given in vain, in vain; And sweet is Death who puts an end to pain: I know not which is sweeter-no, not I. "Love, art thou sweet? then bitter Death must be: Love, thou art bitter: sweet is Death to me. O Love, if death be sweeter, let me die. "Sweet Love, that seems not made to fade away, Sweet Death, that seems to make us loveless clay, I know not which is sweeter-no, not I. "I fain would follow Love, if that could be; I needs must follow Death, who calls for me; Call and I follow, I follow! Let me die." A. Tennyson. 270 LOVE AND DEATH. LOVE AND DEATH. WHAT time the mighty moon was gathering light, And all about him rolled his lustrous eyes; "You must begone," said Death, "these walks are mine." Love wept and spread his sheeny vans for flight; Yet, ere he parted, said,-"This hour is thine; Thou art the shadow of life; and as the tree Life eminent creates the shade of death; The shadow passeth when the tree shall fall, A. Tennyson. LOVE A SONNET. 271 LOVE-A SONNET. I THOUGHT once how Theocritus had sung "Guess now who holds thee?" "Death," I said; but there E. B. Browning. |