Amore e 'l cor gentil sono una cosa

(Amore and the gentle heart are one)

Amore e 'l cor gentil sono una cosa,

Sì come il saggio in suo dittare pone,

E così esser l'un sanza l'altro osa

Com'alma razional sanza ragione.

Amor per sire e 'l cor per sua magione,

Dentro la qual dormendo si riposa

Tal volta poca e tal lunga stagione.

Bieltate appare in saggia donna pui,

Che piace a gli occhi sì, che dentro al core

Nasce un disio de la cosa piacente;

E tanto dura talora in costui,

Che fa svegliar lo spirito d'Amore.

E simil face in donna omo valente.

She wore a new "terra-cotta" dress,

And we stayed, because of the pelting storm,

Within the hansom's dry recess,

Though the horse had stopped; yea, motionless

Then the downpour ceased, to my sharp sad pain

And the glass that had screened our forms before

Flew up, and out she sprang to her door:

I should have kissed her if the rain

With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,

That o'er the green corn field did pass,

In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,

When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding.

With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,

Those pretty country folk would lie,

In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,

When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding.

This carol they began that hour,

With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino:

How that a life was but a flower,

In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,

When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding.

I told my love, I told my love,

Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears--

Never give all the heart, for love

Will hardly seem worth thinking of

To passionate women if it seem

That it fades out from kiss to kiss;

For everything that's lovely is

But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.

O never give the heart outright,

For they, for all smooth lips can say,

Have given their hearts up to the play.

And who could play it well enough

If deaf and dumb and blind with love?

He that made this knows all the cost,

For he gave all his heart and lost.

Lines To a Movement in Mozart's E-Flat Symphony

We flew by meads and mountains northerly! -

Yea, to such freshness, fairness, fulness, fineness, freeness,

We looked together upon the pestered sea! -

Yea, to such surging, swaying, sighing, swelling, shrinking,

We eyed each other and feared futurity! -

Yea, to such bodings, broodings, beatings, blanchings, blessings,

Away from the prancing folk, by the strawberry-tree! -

Yea, to such rashness, ratheness, rareness, ripeness, richness,

That break'st impossibilities and briars,

Which thou thyself didst make for thy desires,

At every step thyself nigh death to be.

The glory of triumphs or of victory;

Those who resist not fortune manfully,

And in soft sloth their senses all confound.

At a high rate is reasonable and best;

Excel those pledges by love's hand impressed;

Nothing is worth esteem that costs not dear.

Will often win things most impossible;

To my soul's deep desires, in her stern will,

That I shall climb from earth to her fair skies.

Since thou dost love, yet strike;

"C'est toi dors dans l'ombre, o sacre Souvenir."

If we could have remembrance now

And see, as in the days to come

We shall, what's venturous in these hours:

The swift, intangible romance of fields at home,

The gleams of sun, the showers,

Our workaday contentments, or our powers

To fare still forward through the uncharted haze

For, looking back when years shall flow

Upon this olden day that's now,

We'll see, romantic in dimn'd hours,

-- Frontpiece, Romance, Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford

and in the colors of your dress.

-- (c) 1995 Burton Randall Hanson

Sometimes I forget what day it is

abstracting time into your voice,

I find relief in this blurring.

I enjoy the abstraction of dance,

-- (c) 2000 Burton Randall Hanson

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometimes declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Had we but world enough and time

This coyness, Lady, were no crime.

We would sit down and think which way

To walk and pass our long love's day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges' side

Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the Flood,

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

Vaster than empires, and more slow;

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;

Two hundred to adore each breast,

But thirty thousand to the rest:

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart.

For, Lady, you deserve this state;

Nor would I love at lower rate.

Time's winged chariot hurrying near;

Thy beauty shall no more be found,

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

My echoing song; then worms shall try

That long preserv'd virginity,

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

The grave's a fine and private place,

But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

At every pore with instant fires,

Now let us sport us while we may,

And now, like amorous birds of prey,

Rather at once our time devour

Than languish in his slow-chapt power.

Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball,

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Through the iron gates of life.

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.