As you may see, but half aware
If it be late or soon,
Soft breathing on the day-time air,
The fair forgotten Moon.
And though love cannot bind me, Love,
— Ah no! — yet I could stay
Maybe, with wings forever spread,
— Forever, and a day.
The Thought of her. [Richard Hovey]
My love for thee doth take me unaware,
When most with lesser things my brain is wrought,
As in some nimble interchange of thought
The silence enters, and the talkers stare.
Suddenly I am still and thou art there,
A viewless visitant and unbesought,
And all my thinking trembles into nought
And all my being opens like a prayer.
Thou art the lifted Chalice in my soul,
And I a dim church at the thought of thee;
Brief be the moment, but the mass is said,
The benediction like an aureole
Is on my spirit, and shuddering through me
A rapture like the rapture of the dead.
Song. "If love were but a little thing —". [Florence Earle Coates]
If love were but a little thing —
Strange love, which, more than all, is great —
One might not such devotion bring,
Early to serve and late.
If love were but a passing breath —
Wild love — which, as God knows, is sweet —
One might not make of life and death
A pillow for love's feet.
The Rosary. [Robert Cameron Rogers]
The hours I spent with thee, dear heart,
Are as a string of pearls to me;
I count them over, every one apart,
My rosary.
Each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer,
To still a heart in absence wrung;
I tell each bead unto the end — and there
A cross is hung.