Coventry Patmore
Departure
It was not like your great and gracious ways! Do you, that have naught other to lament, Never, my Love, repent Of how, that July afternoon, You went, With sudden, unintelligible phrase, And frighten’d
Magna Est Veritas
Here, in this little Bay, Full of tumultuous life and great repose, Where, twice a day, The purposeless, gay ocean comes and goes, Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town, I sit
The Foreign Land
A woman is a foreign land, Of which, though there he settle young, A man will ne’er quite understand The customs, politics, and tongue. The foolish hie them post-haste through, See fashions odd, and
Unthrift
Ah, wasteful woman, she who may On her sweet self set her own price, Knowing men cannot choose but pay, How she has cheapen’d paradise; How given for nought her priceless gift, How spoil’d
The Married Lover
Why, having won her, do I woo? Because her spirit’s vestal grace Provokes me always to pursue, But, spirit-like, eludes embrace; Because her womanhood is such That, as on court-days subjects kiss The Queen’s
Love's Reality
I walk, I trust, with open eyes; I’ve travelled half my worldly course; And in the way behind me lies Much vanity and some remorse; I’ve lived to feel how pride may part Spirits,
Faint Yet Pursuing
Heroic Good, target for which the young Dream in their dreams that every bow is strung, And, missing, sigh Unfruitful, or as disbelievers die, Thee having miss’d, I will not so revolt, But lowlier
A Farewell
With all my will, but much against my heart, We two now part. My Very Dear, Our solace is, the sad road lies so clear. It needs no art, With faint, averted feet And
The Spirit's Depths
Not in the crisis of events Of compass’d hopes, or fears fulfill’d, Or acts of gravest consequence, Are life’s delight and depth reveal’d. The day of days was not the day; That went before,
The Revelation
An idle poet, here and there, Looks around him; but, for all the rest, The world, unfathomably fair, Is duller than a witling’s jest. Love wakes men, once a lifetime each; They lift their
The Toys
My little Son, who look’d from thoughtful eyes And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise, Having my law the seventh time disobey’d, I struck him, and dismiss’d With hard words and unkiss’d, -His
Deliciae Sapientiae de Amore
Love, light for me Thy ruddiest blazing torch, That I, albeit a beggar by the Porch Of the glad Palace of Virginity, May gaze within, k and sing the pomp I see; For, crown’d
If I were dead
‘IF I were dead, you’d sometimes say, Poor Child!’ The dear lips quiver’d as they spake, And the tears brake From eyes which, not to grieve me, brightly smiled. Poor Child, poor Child! I