What News
Here, ever since you went abroad,
If there be change, no change I see,
I only walk our wonted road,
The road is only walkt by me.
Yes; I forgot; a change there is;
Was it of that you bade me tell?
I catch at times, at times I miss
The sight, the tone, I know so well.
Only two months since you stood here!
Two shortest months! then tell me why
Voices are harsher than they were,
And tears are longer ere they dry.
poem by Walter Savage Landor
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Absence
HERE, ever since you went abroad,
If there be change no change I see:
I only walk our wonted road,
The road is only walk'd by me.
Yes; I forgot; a change there is-
Was it of that you bade me tell?
I catch at times, at times I miss
The sight, the tone, I know so well.
Only two months since you stood here?
Two shortest months? Then tell me why
Voices are harsher than they were,
And tears are longer ere they dry.
poem by Walter Savage Landor
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Cowslips
WITH rosy hand a little girl press’d down
A boss of fresh-cull’d cowslips in a rill:
Often as they sprang up again, a frown
Show’d she dislik’d resistance to her will:
But when they droop’d their heads and shone much less,
She shook them to and fro, and threw them by,
And tripp’d away. “Ye loathe the heaviness
Ye love to cause, my little girls!” thought I,
“And what has shone for you, by you must die!”
poem by Walter Savage Landor
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On Music
MANY love music but for music’s sake;
Many because her touches can awake
Thoughts that repose within the breast half dead,
And rise to follow where she loves to lead.
What various feelings come from days gone by!
What tears from far-off sources dim the eye!
Few, when light fingers with sweet voices play,
And melodies swell, pause, and melt away,
Mind how at every touch, at every tone,
A spark of life hath glisten’d and hath gone.
poem by Walter Savage Landor
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Late Leaves
THE leaves are falling; so am I;
The few late flowers have moisture in the eye;
So have I too.
Scarcely on any bough is heard
Joyous, or even unjoyous, bird
The whole wood through.
Winter may come: he brings but nigher
His circle (yearly narrowing) to the fire
Where old friends meet.
Let him; now heaven is overcast,
And spring and summer both are past,
And all things sweet.
poem by Walter Savage Landor
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Resignation
WHY, why repine, my pensive friend,
At pleasures slipp'd away?
Some the stern Fates will never lend,
And all refuse to stay.
I see the rainbow in the sky,
The dew upon the grass;
I see them, and I ask not why
They glimmer or they pass.
With folded arms I linger not
To call them back; 'twere vain:
In this, or in some other spot,
I know they'll shine again.
poem by Walter Savage Landor
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Of Clementina
In Clementina’s artless mien
Lucilla asks me what I see,
And are the roses of sixteen
Enough for me?
Lucilla asks, if that be all,
Have I not cull’d as sweet before:
Ah yes, Lucilla! and their fall
I still deplore.
I now behold another scene,
Where Pleasure beams with Heaven’s own light,
More pure, more constant, more serene,
And not less bright.
Faith, on whose breast the Loves repose,
Whose chain of flowers no force can sever,
And Modesty who, when she goes,
Is gone for ever.
poem by Walter Savage Landor
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Defiance
Catch her and hold her if you can--
See, she defies you with her fan,
Shuts, opens, and then holds it spread
In threatening guise over your head.
Ah! why did you not start before
She reached the porch and closed the door?
Simpleton! Will you never learn
That girls and time will not return;
Of each you should have made the most;
Once gone, they are forever lost.
In vain your knuckles knock your brow,
In vain will you remember how
Like a slim brook the gamesome maid
Sparkled, and ran into the shade.
poem by Walter Savage Landor
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Absence
HERE, ever since you went abroad,
If there be change no change I see:
I only walk our wonted road,
The road is only walk'd by me.
Yes; I forgot; a change there is--
Was it of that you bade me tell?
I catch at times, at times I miss
The sight, the tone, I know so well.
Only two months since you stood here?
Two shortest months? Then tell me why
Voices are harsher than they were,
And tears are longer ere they dry.
poem by Walter Savage Landor
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Overture
From “Thrasymedes and Eunoë”
WHO will away to Athens with me? who
Loves choral songs and maidens crown’d with flowers,
Unenvious? mount the pinnace; hoist the sail.
I promise ye, as many as are here,
Ye shall not, while ye tarry with me, taste
From unrins’d barrel the diluted wine
Of a low vineyard or a plant ill prun’d,
But such as anciently the Ægean isles
Pour’d in libation at their solemn feasts:
And the same goblets shall ye grasp, emboss’d
With no vile figures of loose languid boors,
But such as gods have liv’d with and have led.
poem by Walter Savage Landor
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