~ E ~

I'd like to meet:

Old friends, new friends

TO A FRIEND

I ask but one thing of you, only one,
That always you will be my dream of you;
That never shall I wake to find untrue
All this I have believed and rested on,
Forever vanished, like a vision gone
Out into the night. Alas, how few
There are who strike in us a chord we knew
Existed, but so seldom heard its tone
We tremble at the half-forgotten sound.
The world is full of rude awakenings
And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground,
Yet still our human longings vainly clings
To a belief in beauty through all wrongs.
O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!

-AMY LOWELL

CORRINE‘S LAST LOVE SONG

I

How beautiful, how beautiful you streamed upon my sight,
In glory and in grandeur, as a gorgeous sunset-light!
How softly, soul-subduing, fell your words upon mine ear,
Like low aerial music when some angel hovers near!
What tremulous, faint ecstasy to clasp your hand in mine,
Till the darkness fell upon me of a glory too divine!
The air around grew languid with our intermingled breath,
And in your beauty‘s shadow I sank motionless as death.
I saw you not, I heard not, for a mist was on my brain--
I only felt that life could give no joy like that again.

II

And this was Love, I knew it not, but blindly floated on,
And now I‘m on the ocean waste, dark, desolate, alone;
The waves are raging round me--I‘m reckless where they guide;
No hope is left to right me, no strength to stem the tide.
As a leaf along the torrent, a cloud across the sky,
As dust upon the whirlwind, so my life is drifting by.
The dream that drank the meteor‘s light--the form from Heav‘n has flown--
The vision and the glory, they are passing--they are gone.
Oh! love is frantic agony, and life one throb of pain;
Yet I would bear its darkest woes to dream that dream again.

-JANE FRANCESCA LADY WILDE