The Victories of Love, and Other Poems

From the opening

Mother, I smile at your alarms! I own, indeed, my Cousin's charms, But, like all nursery maladies, Love is not badly taken twice. Have you forgotten Charlotte Hayes, My playmate in the pleasant days At Knatchley, and her sister, Anne, The twins, so made on the same plan, That one wore blue, the other white, To mark them to their father's sight; And how, at Knatchley harvesting, You bade me kiss her in the ring, Like Anne and all the others? You, That never of my sickness knew, Will laugh, yet had I the disease, And gravely, if the signs are these: As, ere the Spring has any power, The almond branch all turns to flower, Though not a leaf is out, so she The bloom of life provoked in me And, hard till then and selfish, I Was thenceforth nought but sanctity And service: life was mere delight In being wholly good and right, As she was; just, without a slur; Honouring myself no less than her; Obeying, in the loneliest place, Ev'n to the slightest gesture, grace, Assured that one so fair, so true, He only served that was so too. For me, hence weak towards the weak, No more the unnested blackbird's shriek Startled the light-leaved wood; on high Wander'd the gadding butterfly, Unscared by my flung cap; the bee, Rifling the hollyhock in glee, Was no more trapp'd with his own flower, And for his honey slain.

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