The Project Gutenberg EBook of English Poems, by Richard Le Gallienne

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Title: English Poems

Author: Richard Le Gallienne

Release Date: February 2, 2004 [EBook #10913]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH POEMS ***

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ENGLISH POEMS

By

Richard Le Gallienne

London: John Lane at The Bodley Head in Vigo Street.

Boston: Copland & Day 69 Cornhill.

A.D. 1895.

_First Edition
        September 1892

Second Edition
        October 1892

Third Edition
        January 1894

Fourth Edition
        Revised April 1895_

To Sissie Le Gallienne

EPISTLE DEDICATORY

_Dear Sister: Hear the conclusion of the whole matter. You dream like mad, you love like tinder, you aspire like a star-struck moth—for what? That you may hive little lyrics, and sell to a publisher for thirty pieces of silver.

Hard by us here is a 'bee-farm.' It always reminds me of a publisher's. The bee has loved a thousand flowers, through a hundred afternoons, he has filled little sacred cells with the gold of his stolen kisses—for what? That the whole should be wrenched away and sold at so much 'the comb'—as though it were a hair-comb. 'Mummy is become merchandise … and Pharaoh is sold for balsams.'

Can we ever forget those old mornings when we rose with the lark, and, while the earliest sunlight slanted through the sleeping house, stole to the little bookclad study to read—Heaven bless us!—you, perhaps, Mary Wollstonecraft, and I, Livy, in a Froben folio of 1531!!

Will you accept these old verses in memory of those old mornings? Ah, then came in the sweet o' the year.

Yours now as then_,

R. Le G.

May 14th, 1892.

CONTENTS

_Epistle Dedicatory,

To the Reader_,

I. PAOLO AND FRANCESCA,

II. YOUNG LOVE—

i. Preludes,

ii. Prelude—'I make this rhyme,'

iii. 'But, Song, arise thee on a greater wing,'

iv. Once,

v. The Two Daffodils,

vi. 'Why did she marry him?'

vii. The Lamp and the Star,

viii. Orbits,

ix. Never—Ever,

x. Love's Poor,

xi. Comfort of Dante,

xii. A Lost Hour,

xiii. Met once more,

xiv. A June Lily,

xv. Regret

xvi. Love Afar

xvii. Canst thou be true across so many miles?

Postscript

III. COR CORDIUM—

To my Wife, Mildred

The Destined Maid: a Prayer

With some old Love Verses

In a copy of Mr. Swinburne's Tristram

Comfort at Parting

Happy Letter

Primrose and Violet

'Juliet and her Romeo,'

In her Diary

Two Parables

A Love Letter

In the Night

The Constant Lover

The Wonder-Child

IV. MISCELLANEOUS—

The House of Venus

Satiety

What of the Darkness?

Ad Cimmerios

Old Love Letters

Death in a London Lodging

Time Flies

So soon Tired

Autumn

A Frost Fancy

The World is Wide

Saint Charles!

Good-Night

Beatrice

A Child's Evensong

An Epitaph on a Goldfish

Beauty Accurst

To a Dead Friend

Sunset in the City

The City in Moonlight

V. OF POETS AND POETRY—

Inscriptions

The Décadent to his Soul

To a Poet

The Passionate Reader to his Poet

Matthew Arnold

'Tennyson' at the Farm

'The Desk's Dry Wood,'

A Library in a Garden

On the Morals of Poets

Faery Gold

All Sung

Corydon's Farewell to his Pipe

ENGLISH POEMS

TO THE READER

Art was a palace once, things great and fair,
And strong and holy, found a temple there:
Now 'tis a lazar-house of leprous men.
O shall me hear an English song again!
Still English larks mount in the merry morn,
An English May still brings an English thorn,
Still English daisies up and down the grass,
Still English love for English lad and lass—
Yet youngsters blush to sing an English song!

Thou nightingale that for six hundred years
Sang to the world—O art thou husht at last!
For, not of thee this new voice in our ears,
Music of France that once was of the spheres;
And not of thee these strange green flowers that spring
From daisy roots and seemed to bear a sting.

Thou Helicon of numbers 'undefiled,'
Forgive that 'neath the shadow of thy name,
England, I bring a song of little fame;
Not as one worthy but as loving thee,
Not as a singer, only as a child.

PAOLO AND FRANCESCA

To R.K. Leather
(July 16th, 1892.)

PAOLO AND FRANCESCA

  It happened in that great Italian land
    Where every bosom heateth with a star—
  At Rimini, anigh that crumbling strand
    The Adriatic filcheth near and far—
    In that same past where Dante's dream-days are,
  That one Francesca gave her youthful gold
    Unto an aged carle to bolt and bar;
  Though all the love which great young hearts can hold,
How could she give that love unto a miser old?

  Nay! but young Paolo was the happy lad,
    A youth of dreaming eye yet dauntless foot,
  Who all Francesca's wealth of loving had;
    One brave to scale a wall and steal the fruit,
    Nor fear because some dotard owned the root;
  Yea! one who wore his love like sword on thigh
    And kept not all his valour for his lute;