Читать книгу The Victories of Love, and Other Poems - Coventry Patmore - Страница 4

The multitude of voices blithe

Of early day, the hissing scythe

Across the dew drawn and withdrawn,

The noisy peacock on the lawn,

These, and the sun’s eye-gladding gleam,

This morning, chased the sweetest dream

That e’er shed penitential grace

On life’s forgetful commonplace;

Yet ’twas no sweeter than the spell

To which I woke to say farewell.

   Noon finds me many a mile removed

From her who must not be beloved;

And us the waste sea soon shall part,

Heaving for aye, without a heart!

Mother, what need to warn me so?

I love Miss Churchill?  Ah, no, no.

I view, enchanted, from afar,

And love her as I love a star.

For, not to speak of colder fear,

Which keeps my fancy calm, I hear,

Under her life’s gay progress hurl’d.

The wheels of the preponderant world,

Set sharp with swords that fool to slay

Who blunders from a poor byway,

To covet beauty with a crown

Of earthly blessing added on;

And she’s so much, it seems to me,

Beyond all women womanly,

I dread to think how he should fare

Who came so near as to despair.