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University of Virginia Library

Plays and poems

Boker, George H. (1823-1890)

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SONGS AND SONNETS.

THE ROSE OF GRANADA.

[There was a gay maiden lived down by the mill]

[Yes, I loved her! Bear me witness]

[When we meet again, shall I behold no shrinking]

[The fever in my blood has died]

[I sit beneath the sunbeams' glow]

[Wheel on thy axle, softly run]

THE AWAKING OF THE POETICAL FACULTY.

TO ANDREW JACKSON.

TO LOUIS NAPOLEON.

TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN SERGEANT.

TO THE MEMORY OF M. A. R.

TO THE MEMORY OF S. S.

TO BAYARD TAYLOR.

[How the fixed gaze of unadmiring time]

[Dear is the fruit of sorrow, priceless store]

[Not when the buxom form which nature wears]

[Spring, in the gentle look with which she turns]

[Either the sum of this sweet mutiny]

[I'll call thy frown a headsman, passing grim]

[Nay, not to thee, to nature I will tie]

[How canst thou call my modest love impure]

[Why shall I chide the hand of wilful Time]

[Love is that orbit of the restless soul]

[Thou who dost smile upon me, yet unknown]

[Fear not, dear maid, the love I give to thee]

[Where lags my mistress while the drowsy year]

[O! would that Fortune might bestow on me]

[Your love to me appears in doubtful signs]

[No gentle touches of your timid hand]

[Doubt is the offspring of a self-distrust]

[As at an altar, love, behold me kneel]

[I do assure thee, love, each kiss of thine]

[To win and lose thee! In one hour to sa,]

[Here part we, love, beneath the world's broad eye]

[And shall we part without a parting kis?]

[No hope is mine, no comfort mine; for I]

[Imagine, love, that I bent over thee]

[My lady sighs, and I am far away]

[If, by an absence of unnumbered years]

[Hence, cold despair! I do believe that they]

ON MY LADY'S LETTER.

[The ghostly midnight settles on my heart]

[In this deep hush and quiet of my soul]

[I have been mounted on life's topmost wave]

[Ah! would to heaven that this dear misery]

[Sometimes, in bitter fancy, I bewail]

[To-night the tempest rages. All without]

[Another shriek like that, O furious wind]

[Again the tireless winds are rushing past]

[Thank Heaven, a lull—a lull in the long roar]

[What fancy, or what flight of wingéd thought]

[I know art hardens what my love would speak]

[Yet, love, forgive thy Poet if his lays]

[O! for some spirit, some magnetic spark]

[There is a sorrow underlies mere grief]

[To love thee absent were sufficient pain]

[Why should I cheat my heart with open lies]

[Ah! let me live on memories of old]

[In vain to thee I stretch imploring arms]

[Time shall not dry thy ever-falling tears]

[I do not sorrow that thy love was cast]

[I heard a voice that through the midnight cried]

[Like old King Hamlet sleeping in the flowers]

[No forward step in all my history]

[I will not blazon forth thy sacred name]

[As a sad hermit in his cloistered cell]

[Only through this, this precious gift of song]

[Fate, of all seasons, chose the happy time]

[I shall be faithful, though the weary years]

[I have not turned for sympathy to friends]

[Across the waters, through the void of night]

[Here let the motions of the world be still]

[All the world's malice, all the spite of fate]

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400

[Love is that orbit of the restless soul]

Love is that orbit of the restless soul
Whose circle grazes the confines of space,
Bounding within the limits of its race
Utmost extremes; whose high and topmost pole
Within the very blaze of heaven doth roll;
Whose nether course is through the darkest place
Eclipsed by hell. What daring hand shall trace
The blended joys and sorrows that control
A heart whose journeys the fixed hand of fate
Points through this pathway? Who may soar so high—
Behold such glories with unwinking eye?
Who drop so low beneath his mortal state,
And thence return with careful chart and date,
To mark which way another's course must lie?