You sought to prove how I could love, Is not more cold to you than I. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, You put strange memories in my head. Not thrice your branching limes have blown Since I beheld young Laurence dead. O, your sweet eyes, your low replies! A great enchantress you may be; But there was that across his throat Which you had hardly cared to see. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, When thus he met his mother's view, She had the passions of her kind, She spake some certain truths of you. Indeed I heard one bitter word That scarce is fit for you to hear; Her manners had not that repose Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, There stands a specter in your hall; The guilt of blood is at your door; You changed a wholesome heart to gall. You held your course without remorse, To make him trust his modest worth, And, last, you fixed a vacant stare, And slew him with your noble birth. Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere, From yon blue heavens above us bent, The gardener Adam and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent. Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood. Shadows I know you, Clara Vere de Vere; You pine among your halls and towers: The languid light of your proud eyes Is wearied of the rolling hours. In glowing health, with boundless wealth, But sickening of a vague disease, You know so ill to deal with time, You needs must play such pranks as these. Clara, Clara Vere de Vere, If time be heavy on your hands, Are there no beggars at your gate, Nor any poor about your lands? O, teach the orphan-boy to read, Or teach the orphan-girl to sew, Pray Heaven for a human heart, And let the foolish yeoman go. 815 Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] SHADOWS THEY seemed, to those who saw them meet, Her smile was undisturbed and sweet, But yet if one the other's name In some unguarded moment heard, And letters of mere formal phrase And this was not the work of days, Alas, that love was not too strong Alas, that they delayed so long Yet what no chance could then reveal, SORROWS OF WERTHER WERTHER had a love for Charlotte Such as words could never utter; Would you know how first he met her? She was cutting bread and butter. Charlotte was a married lady, And a moral man was Werther, So he sighed and pined and ogled, Till he blew his silly brains out, Charlotte, having seen his body Went on cutting bread and butter. William Makepeace Thackeray [1811-1863] THE AGE OF WISDOM Ho, pretty page, with the dimpled chin, That never has known the barber's shear, All your wish is woman to win, This is the way that boys begin,— Wait till you come to Forty Year. Curly gold locks cover foolish brains, Billing and cooing is all your cheer; Sighing, and singing of midnight strains, Under Bonnybell's window-panes, Wait till you come to Forty Year, Andrea del Sarto Forty times over let Michaelmas pass, Grizzling hair the brain does clear- Pledge me round; I bid ye declare, All good fellows whose beards are gray, Common grow and wearisome ere Ever a month was passed away? The reddest lips that ever have kissed, Gillian's dead, God rest her bier, Alone and merry at Forty Year, Dipping my nose in the Gascon wine. 817 William Makepeace Thackeray [1811-1863] ANDREA DEL SARTO CALLED THE FAULTLESS PAINTER" BUT do not let us quarrel any more, Sit down and all shall happen as you wish. You turn your face, but does it bring your heart? As if-forgive now-should you let me sit And mine the man's bared breast she curls inside. It saves a model. So! keep looking so- -You, at the point of your first pride in me There's the bell clinking from the chapel-top; And autumn grows, autumn in everything. As if I saw alike my work and self And all that I was born to be and do, A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God's hand. How strange now looks the life he makes us lead; So free we seem, so fettered fast we are! I feel he laid the fetter; let it lie! |