LOVE'S SECRET

Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind doth move
Silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart,

Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears: -
Ah! she did depart.

Soon after she was gone from me

A traveller came by,

Silently, invisibly :

He took her with a sigh.

William Blake

BONNIE DOON

Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon
How can ye blume sae fair!
How can ye chant, ye little birds,

And I sae fu' o' care!

Thou'll break my heart, thou bonnie bird

That sings upon the bough;

Thou minds me o' the happy days

When my fause Luve was true.

Thou'll break my heart, thou bonnie bird

That sings beside thy mate;

For sae I sat, and sae I sang,
And wist na o' my fate.

Aft hae I roved by bonnie Doon
To see the woodbine twine,
And ilka bird sang o' its love;
And sae did I o' mine.

Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose,
Frae aff its thorny tree;

And my fause luver staw the rose,
But left the thorn wi' me.

Robert Burns

AT THE CHURCH GATE

Although I enter not,
Yet round about the spot
Ofttimes I hover;

And near the sacred gate,
With longing eyes I wait,
Expectant of her.

The Minster bell tolls out
Above the city's rout

And noise and humming;

They've hush'd the Minster bell;
The organ 'gins to swell:

She's coming! she's coming!

My Lady comes at last,

Timid and stepping fast

And hastening hither,

With modest eyes down-cast:

She comes she's here — she's pass'd.
May heaven go with her!

Kneel undisturb'd, fair Saint!
Pour out your praise or plaint
Meekly and duly!

I will not enter there

To sully your pure prayer
With thoughts unruly.

But suffer me to pace
Round the forbidden place,
Lingering a minute!

Like outcast spirits who wait
And see through heaven's gate
Angels within it.

William Makepeace Thackeray

TO LUCASTA, ON GOING TO THE WARS

Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind
That from the nunnery

Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind,
To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;

And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such

As you too shall adore;

I could not love thee, Dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Richard Lovelace

TOO LATE I STAYED

Too late I stayed, — forgive the crime!
Unheeded flew the hours:

How noiseless falls the foot of Time
That only treads on flowers!

And who, with clear account, remarks
The ebbings of his glass,

When all its sands are diamond sparks,
That dazzle as they pass?

Oh, who to sober measurement
Time's happy swiftness brings,
When birds of paradise have lent
Their plumage to his wings?

William Robert Spencer

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

1807-1882