Oh, Fly Not, Pleasure

Oh fly not, Pleasure, pleasant--hearted Pleasure.
Fold me thy wings, I prithee, yet and stay.
For my heart no measure
Knows nor other treasure
To buy a garland for my love to--day.

And thou too, Sorrow, tender--hearted Sorrow.
Thou grey--eyed mourner, fly not yet away.
For I fain would borrow
Thy sad weeds to--morrow
To make a mourning for love's yesterday.

The voice of Pity, Time's divine dear Pity,
Moved me to tears. I dared not say them nay,
But went forth from the city
Making thus my ditty
Of fair love lost for ever and a day.

poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Come With The Summer Leaves

Come with the summer leaves, love, to my grave,
And, if you doubt among the quiet dead,
Choose out that mound where greenest grasses wave
And where the flowers grow thickest and most red.

Come in the morning while the dews of night,
Which are fair Nature's tears in darkness shed,
Rim the sad petals nor are garnered quite,
Like my lost hopes untimely harvested.

Come to my grave--ah gather, love, those flowers!
Out of my heart they grow for your dear head.
These are its songs unwritten and all yours,
The love I loved you with and left unsaid.

poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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If I Had Known You

If I had known you--oh, if I had known you!
In other days when youth and love were strong,
I would have raised a temple to enthrone you
On some fair pinnacle of cloudless song.

If you had touched me then with your dear laughter,
As now its echo smites me in my grief,
I would have given my soul to you, and after
Lived in my love, grown old in my belief.

If you had loved me,--oh, you would have loved me!
Earth would have worshipped us, its seers sublime,
My song had been a psalm, and Saints had proved me
Prophet and priest, your poet for all time.

poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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A Woman’s Sonnets: VIII

I sue thee not for pity on my case.
If I have sinned, the judgment has begun.
My joy was but one day of all the days,
And clouds have blotted it and hid the sun.
Thou wert so much to me! But soon I knew
How small a part could mine be in thy life,
That all a woman may endure or do
Counts little to her hero in the strife.
I do not blame thee who deserved no blame;
Thou hast so many worlds within thy ken.
I staked my all upon a losing game,
Knowing the nature and the needs of men,
And knowing too how quickly pride is spent.
With open eyes to Love and Death I went.

poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Song Of The Desert Lark

Love, love, in vain
We count the days of Spring.
Lost is all love's pain,
Lost the songs we sing.
Sunshine and Summer rain,
Winter and Spring again
Still the years shall bring,
But we die.

Love, what a noon
Of happy love was ours!
Grief came too soon,
Touched the Autumn flowers,
Grief and the doubt of death,
Mixed with the roses' breath.
Darkly the Winter lowers,
And we die.

His torch, love, the Sun
Turns to the stormy West,

[...] Read more

poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Mitigations

My prison has its pleasures. Every day
At breakfast--time, spare meal of milk and bread,
Sparrows come trooping in familiar way
With head aside beseeching to be fed.
A spider too for me has spun her thread
Across the prison rules, and a brave mouse
Watches in sympathy the warders' tread,
These two my fellow--prisoners in the house.

But about dusk in the rooms opposite
I see lamps lighted, and upon the blind
A shadow passes all the evening through.
It is the gaoler's daughter fair and kind
And full of pity (so I image it)
Till the stars rise, and night begins anew.

poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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The Love Sonnets Of Proteus. Part II: To Juliet: XXV

THE SAME CONTINUED
Give me thy kiss, Juliet, give me thy kiss!
I with my body worship thee and vow
Such service to thy needs as man can do.
I ask no nobler servitude than this.
Am I not thine, the bondsman of thy love,
Whom thou hast bought and ransomed with a price,
And therefore worthy to be ranked above
The very stars that in the heavens move?
And, Juliet, since I thus am one with you,
And kinglier than Plantagenet or Guelph,
What price were meet for my high mightiness?
What gold of joy, what hope, what heavenly pelf
Hast thou to give? Nay, sweetest, give thyself.

poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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If We Had Met

If we had met when leaves were green,
And fate to us less hard had proved,
And naught had been of what has been,
We might have loved as none have loved.

If we had met as girl and boy,
The world of pleasure at our feet,
Our joy had been a perfect joy;
We might have met, but did not meet.

Nor less in youth's full passionate day,
A woman you and I a man,
We might have loved and found a way
No laws could check, no vows could ban.

Too late! Too sad! A year ago,
Even then perhaps, in spite of fate
It might have been,--but ah! not now,
I dare not love you, 'tis too late.

poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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A New Pilgrimage: Sonnet XL

Here therefore ends my sad soul's pilgrimage,
In tears for sin and half--redeemed desire.
She was unworthy her high martyr's rage,
Or to be wholly purified by fire.
O Rome, thy ways are narrow and aspire
Too straitly for the knees of this halt age,
And, with the multitude, her forces tire,
Even while she holds thee fast, her heritage.
Path of sublime perfection upon Earth!
Your's is it in the clamour of vain days
To guard the calm eternal of Man's birth
And like an eagle to renew his days.
Give me your blessing, angels, ere I go,
Angels that guard the bridge of Angelo.

poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

Long have I searched the Earth for liberty
In desert places and lands far abroad
Where neither Kings nor constables should be,
Nor any law of Man, alas, or God.
Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood,
These were my quarries which eternally
Fled from my footsteps fast as I pursued,
Sad phantoms of desire by land and sea.

See, it is ended. Sick and overborne
By foes and fools, and my long chase, I lie.
Here, in these walls, with all life's souls forlorn
Herded I wait,--and in my ears the cry,
``Alas, poor brothers, equal in Man's scorn
And free in God's good liberty to die.''

poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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