Victorian Poetry

First Fig by Edna St Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends

It gives a lovely light!

A Man's Requirements by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I

Love me Sweet, with all thou art,

   Feeling, thinking, seeing;

Love me in the lightest part,

   Love me in full being.

II

Love me with thine open youth

   In its frank surrender;

With the vowing of thy mouth,

   With its silence tender.

III

Love me with thine azure eyes,

   Made for earnest granting;

Taking colour from the skies,

   Can Heaven’s truth be wanting?

IV

Love me with their lids, that fall

   Snow-like at first meeting;

Love me with thine heart, that all

   Neighbours then see beating.

V

Love me with thine hand stretched out

   Freely—open-minded:

Love me with thy loitering foot,—

   Hearing one behind it.

VI

Love me with thy voice, that turns

   Sudden faint above me;

Love me with thy blush that burns

   When I murmur Love me!

VII

Love me with thy thinking soul,

   Break it to love-sighing;

Love me with thy thoughts that roll

   On through living—dying.

VIII

Love me when in thy gorgeous airs,

   When the world has crowned thee;

Love me, kneeling at thy prayers,

   With the angels round thee.

IX

Love me pure, as musers do,

   Up the woodlands shady:

Love me gaily, fast and true

   As a winsome lady.

X

Through all hopes that keep us brave,

   Farther off or nigher,

Love me for the house and grave,

   And for something higher.

XI

Thus, if thou wilt prove me, Dear,

   Woman’s love no fable.

I will love thee—half a year—

   As a man is able.

Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm to-night,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;—on the French coast, the light
Gleams, and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern

The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd;
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true 

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Sonnet On the Sale by Auction of Keats’ Love Letters by Oscar Wilde

These are the letters which Endymion wrote

     To one he loved in secret and apart,

     And now the brawlers of the auction-mart

Bargain and bid for each tear-blotted note,

Aye! for each separate pulse of passion quote

     The merchant’s price! I think they love not art

     Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart,

That small and sickly eyes may glare or gloat.

Is it not said, that many years ago,

     In a far Eastern town some soldiers ran

     With torches through the midnight, and began

To wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw

     Dice for the garments of a wretched Man,

Not knowing the God’s wonder, or His woe?

Crossing the Bar by Lord Alfred Tennyson

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

 When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell, 

 And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark; 

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face  

When I have cross’d the bar.

Love and Sorrow by Lord Alfred Tennyson

O MAIDEN, fresher than the first green leaf
With which the fearful springtide flecks the lea,
Weep not, Almeida, that I said to thee
That thou hast half my heart, for bitter grief
Doth hold the other half in sovranty.

Thou art my heart’s sun in love’s crystalline:
Yet on both sides at once thou canst not shine:
Thine is the bright side of my heart, and thine
My heart’s day, but the shadow of my heart,
Issue of its own substance, my heart’s night
Thou canst not lighten even with thy light,
All powerful in beauty as thou art.

Almeida, if my heart were substanceless,
Then might thy rays pass thro’ to the other side,
So swiftly, that they nowhere would abide,
But lose themselves in utter emptiness.
Half-light, half-shadow, let my spirit sleep
They never learnt to love who never knew to weep.

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* This post was inspired by My Oxford Year *