Silent Noon
(from The House of Life)

(Dante Gabriel Rossetti)


Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass, -
The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
'Neath billowing [clouds]* that scatter and amass.
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
Are golden kingcup fields with silver edge
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn hedge.
'Tis visible silence, still as the hour glass.

Deep in the sunsearched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: -
So this winged hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love.


O Mistress Mine

(William Shakespeare)


O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O stay and hear, your true love's coming
That can sing both high and low.

Trip no farther, pretty sweeting;
[Journeys]+ end in lovers' meeting,
Ev'ry wise man's son doth know.

What is love? 'Tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:

In delay there lies no plenty;
Then [come kiss]++ me, sweet and twenty;
Youth's a stuff will not endure.


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