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Richard Lovelace
Sweet serene sky-like flower,
Haste to adorn her bower;
From thy long cloudy bed
Shoot forth thy damask head!
New-startled blush of Flora,
The grief of pale Aurora,
Who will contest no more,
Haste, haste to strew her floor!
Vermilion ball that's given
From lip to lip in heaven,
Love's couch's coverlet,
Haste, haste to make her bed!
Dear offspring of pleased Venus
And jolly plump Silenus,
Haste, haste to deck the hair
Of the only sweetly fair!
The first rose on my rose-tree
Budded, bloomed, and shattered,
During sad days when to me
Nothing mattered.
Grief of grief has drained me clean;
Still it seems a pity
No one saw,--it must have been
Very pretty.
Then the golden hour
Will tick its last
And the flame will go down in the flower.
A briefer length of moon
Will mark the sea-line and the yellow dune.
Then we may think of this, yet
There will be something forgotten
And something we should forget.
It will be like all things we know:
The stone will fail; a rose is sure to go.
It will be quiet then and we may stay
As long at the picket gate
But there will be less to say.
O rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
A ROSE-BUD by my early walk,
Adown a corn-enclosed bawk,
Sae gently bent its thorny stalk,
All on a dewy morning.
Ere twice the shades o’ dawn are fled,
In a’ its crimson glory spread,
And drooping rich the dewy head,
It scents the early morning.
Within the bush her covert nest
A little linnet fondly prest;
The dew sat chilly on her breast,
Sae early in the morning.
She soon shall see her tender brood,
The pride, the pleasure o’ the wood,
Amang the fresh green leaves bedew’d,
Awake the early morning.
the certain clock of a gun
the fleet rose of a gun
the plain dish of a gun
the drunk kiss of a gun
in this cold rose
a moth
having a sleep
oysters defeat me
and years inks little hopes
any rose without enemies
like instructions for melancholy
that make us perfectly happy
but whisper some hard word
just as we go
I suffer auspiciously as a rose
from unfinished pain
having made myself captain
I know who he is
but you see a man
dead of ordinary melancholy
I saved part of myself in ash
as a wish as a river
to visit the ships and write
a letter to a rose
I had a punishing scruple
like a home of ice
such troubled quiet
in a rose
how the held-up hands cry
what shall we do
I have given my life for nothing
to be flung down on a bed
her mouth pretty as night
the rose I lock my mouth to
saying her fill