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You sought to prove how I could love,
And my disdain is my reply.
The lion on your old stone gates
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 had hardly cared to see.

Which you

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.

837

Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892]

SHADOWS

THEY seemed, to those who saw them meet,
The casual friends of every day;

Her smile was undisturbed and sweet,
His courtesy was free and gay.

But yet if one the other's name
In some unguarded moment heard,
The heart you thought so calm and tame
Would struggle like a captured bird:

And letters of mere formal phrase
Were blistered with repeated tears,-

And this was not the work of days,
But had gone on for years and years!

Alas, that love was not too strong
For maiden shame and manly pride!

Alas, that they delayed so long
The goal of mutual bliss beside!

Yet what no chance could then reveal,

And neither would be first to own,
Let fate and courage now conceal,

When truth could bring remorse alone.
Richard Monckton Milnes [1809-1885]

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,
And, for all the wealth of Indies,
Would do nothing for to hurt her.

So he sighed and pined and ogled,
And his passion boiled and bubbled,

Till he blew his silly brains out,
And no more was by it troubled.

Charlotte, having seen his body
Borne before her on a shutter,
Like a well-conducted person,

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-
Then you know a boy is an ass,
Then you know the worth of a lass,
Once you have come to Forty Year.

Pledge me round; I bid ye declare,

All good fellows whose beards are gray,
Did not the fairest of the fair

Common grow and wearisome ere

Ever a month was passed away?

The reddest lips that ever have kissed,
The brightest eyes that ever have shone,
May pray and whisper, and we not list,
Or look away and never be missed,
Ere yet ever a month is gone.

Gillian's dead, God rest her bier,
How I loved her twenty years syne!
Marian's married, but I sit here,

Alone and merry at Forty Year,

Dipping my nose in the Gascon wine.

839

William Makepeace Thackeray [1811-1863]

ANDREA DEL SARTO

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CALLED THE FAULTLESS PAINTER"

BUT do not let us quarrel any more,
No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once:

Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.

You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?
I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear,

Treat his own subject after his own way,
Fix his own time, accept too his own price,
And shut the money into this small hand
When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly?
Oh, I'll content him,--but to-morrow, Love!
I often am much wearier than you think,
This evening more than usual, and it seems

As if-forgive now-should you let me sit
Here by the window, with your hand in mine,
And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole,
Both of one mind, as married people use,
Quietly, quietly the evening through,
I might get up to-morrow to my work
Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try.
To-morrow how you shall be glad for this!
Your soft hand is a woman of itself,

And mine the man's bared breast she curls inside.
Don't count the time lost neither; you must serve
For each of the five pictures we require;

It saves a model. So! keep looking so—
My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds!
-How could you ever prick those perfect ears,
Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet-
My face, my moon, my everybody's moon,
Which everybody looks on and calls his,
And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn,
While she looks--no one's: very dear, no less.
You smile? why, there's my picture ready made,
There's what we painters call our harmony!
A common grayness silvers everything,—
All in a twilight, you and I alike

-You, at the point of your first pride in me
(That's gone you know),-but I, at every point;
My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down
To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole.

There's the bell clinking from the chapel-top;

That length of convent wall across the way

Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside;

The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease,

And autumn grows, autumn in everything.

Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape

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!

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