THE ALBUM OF LOVE. "Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, And men below and saints above." DEDICATION. To those who have already learned to love, and, to those who have yet to love, these pages are alike dedicated; and thus the Dedication becomes of universal application; for— "It is decreed by Heaven above, That the love of all, who may find an echo to their own thoughts within this little volume, may be pure and prosperous, is the sincere desire of their well-wisher, THE EDITOR INVITATION. COME, thou lover, on whose eyes Come, thou maiden, sweet and young, Like a lyre with silver strung, In my little oracle. Visions bright of happy youth, Thoughts of tenderness and truth, Blooms that, borrowed from the skies, Tell on earth of paradise! LOVE. I'LL sing of heroes and of kings, Αριαδνη. The strings will sound of naught but love. COWLEY. TO LOVE. O SACRED fire that burnest mightily In living breasts, ykindled first above Emongst th' eternal spheres and lamping sky, And thence poured into men, which men call love. 'Tis that sweet fit, that does true beauty love, And choseth virtue for his dearest dame, Whence spring all noble deeds, and never-dying fame. Well did antiquitie a god thee deeme That over mortal minds has so great might, To order them as best to thee doth seeme, And all their actions to direct aright; The fatal purpose of divine foresight Thou dost effect in destined descents, Through deep impression of thy secret might; And stirrest up the hero's high intents, Which the late world admires for wondrous monuments. Ne suffereth uncomely idleness In his free thought to build her sluggish nest. Ne suffereth it thought of ungentleness Ever to creep into his noble breast; But to the highest and the worthiest It lets not fall-it lets it not to rest: It lets not scare the prince to breathe at all, But to his first pursuit him forward still doth call. SPENSER LOVE? I will tell thee what it is to love. And if there's heaven on earth, that heaven is surely thi Yes, this is Love, the steadfast and the true, The immortal glory which hath never set; The best, the brightest boon the heart e'er knew: To breathe in some green we' their first young vow, That throws its own rich color over all, Has tinged the cheek we love with its glad red; A light the eyes can never see again; WOMAN'S LOVE. O, THE Voice of woman's love! What a bosom-stirring word! LANDON. Was a sweeter ever uttered, How it melts upon the ear! How it nourishes the heart! Cold, ah! cold must his appear That has never shared a part Of woman's love. 'Tis pleasure to the mourner, The pilgrimage of many, 'Tis the gem of beauty's birth; OH! man may bear with suffering: his heart N. P. WILLIS. AMOUR toi seul remplis notre ame, toi seul es la source de tous les biens, tant que la vertu s'accorde avec toi. Ah! qu'elle soit toujours ton guide, et que tu sois son consolateur! Ne vous quittez jamais, enfans du ciel; marchez ensemble, en vous tenant la main. Si vous rencontrez dans votre route ou les chagrins, ou les malheurs, soutenez-vou mutuellement. Ils passeront, ces malheurs; et la felicite dont vous jouirez en aura cent fois plus de charmes: le souvenir des peines passées rendra plus touchants vos plaisirs. C'est ainsi qu'après un orage on trouve plus verd le gazon, plus riante la campagne couverte de perles liquides, plus belles les fleurs des champs relevant leurs têtes pen chées; et l'on écoute avec plus de délices l'alouette ou rossignol qui chantent en secouant leurs ailes. FLORIAN A LOVER TO HIS MISTRESS. SING, siren, for thyself, and I will dote; Spread o'er the silver waves thy golden hairs; And as a bed I'll take them and there lie; And in that glorious supposition think He gains by death that hath such means to die. SHAKSPERE. No telling how love thrives! to what it comes! SHERIDAN KNOWLES LOVE THE VICTOR. "De tout ce qui t'aimait, n'est il plus rien qui t'aime ?" MIGHTY ones, Love and Death! Ye are strong in this world of ours, Ye meet at the banquets, ye dwell midst the flowers, Which hath the conqueror's wreath? Thou art the victor, Love! Thou art the fearless, the crowned, the free, Thou hast looked on Death and smiled! On field, and flood, and wild! No! thou art the victor, Death! Thou comest, and where is that which spoke From the depth of the eye, when the spirit woke? Gone with the fleeting breath! Thou comest, and what is left Of all that loved us, to say if aught Yet loves-yet answers the burning thought Silence is where thou art! No smile to cheer, and no voice to greet, Beast not thy victory, Death!` It is but as the clouds o'er the sunbeam's power, It is but a tyrant's reign O'er the voice and the lip which he bids be still; They shall soar his might above! Η ΣΜΑΝΗ THE FIRST AVOWAL. Ir was no fancy, he had named the name SHAKSPERE. Of love, and at the thought her cheek grew flame : It was the first time her young ear had heard A lover's burning sigh, or silver word: Her thoughts were all confusion, but most sweet; Her heart beat high, but pleasant was its beat. She murmured over many a snatch of song That might to her own feelings now belong; She thought upon old histories she had read, And placed herself in each high heroine's stead; Then woke her lute,-oh! there is little known Of music's power till aided by love's own. And this is happiness: Oh! love will last When all that made it happiness is past,When all its hopes are as the glittering toys Tine present offers, time to come destroys,When they have been too often crushed to earth, For further blindness to their little worth, When fond illusions have dropt one by one, Lik: pearls from a rich carcanet, till none, Are left upon life's soiled and naked string,An. this is all what time will ever bring! Lot, passionate young Love, how sweet it is ALAS! how light a cause may move Dissension between hearts that love! Hearts that the world in vain had tried And sorrow but more closely tied ; LANDON. LANDON. That stood the storm when waves were rough, Like ships that have gone down at sea A something light as air-a look, A word unkind, or wrongly taken,— spread the breach that words begin; Breaks into floods that part for ever. WOMAN'S CONSTANCY. OH! woman, what bliss, what enchantment we owe To thy soul's chosen love thou unchanged wiit remain EASTERN LOVE-LETTER. IN Eastern lands they talk in flowers, The rose is the sign of joy and love, Young blushing love in its earliest dawn; Pure as a heart in its native heaven; The silent, soft, and humble heart In the violet's hidden sweetness breathes; A twine of evergreen fondly wreathes. STILL there clings PERCIVAL An earth-stain to the fairest things; TO THE ALTAR. OH! there are hearts that well may date The era of their joy from thee, The birthplace of the brightest fate LANDON. That wedded life and love may be; On moments past that led to bliss! JAMES BIRD. WHAT is Love? Ask him who lives, what is life? ask him who adores, what is God?—Thou demandest, what is Love? It is that powerful attraction toward all we conceive, or fear, or hope, beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves. If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our own brain were born anew within another's; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own; that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and melt into our own; that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood. This is Love. This is the bonc and the sanction which connects not only man with man, but with everything that exists. We are born into the world, and there is something within us which, from the instant that we live, more and more thirsts after its likeness. This propensity develops itself with the development of our nature. We dimly see within our intellectual nature a miniature, as it were, of our entire self, yet deprived of all that we condemn or despise: the ideal proto. type of everything excellent and lovely that we are capa ble of conceiving as belonging to the nature of man. Not only the portrait of our external being, but an assemblage of the minutest particles of which our nature is composed: a mirror whose surface reflects only the forms of purity and brightness: a soul within our own soul that describes a circle around its proper paradise, which pain, and sorrow, and evil, dare not overleap. To this we eagerly refer all sensations, thirsting that they should resemble and correspond with it. The discovery of its antitype; the meeting with an understanding capable of clearly estimating our own; an imagination which should enter into and seize upon the subtle and delicate peculiarities which we have delighted to cherish and unfold in secret; with a frame whose nerves, like the chords of two exquisite lyres strung to the accompaniment of one delightful voice, vibrate with the vibrations of our own; and a combination of all these in such proportion as the type within demands: this is the invisible and unattainable point to which Love tends, and to attain which it urges forth the powers of men to arrest the faintest shadow of that without the possession of which there is to rest nor respite to the heart over which it rules. Hence in solitude, or that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings, and yet they sympathise not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which, by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awakens the spirit to breathless rapture, and brings tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. Sterne says that if he were in a desert, he would love some cypress. So soon as this want or power is dead, man becomes a living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk of what once he was. SHELLEY. LOVE UNCHERISHED-DIES. LOVE can not bear rude passion's blast; And who that radiant light can blame So delicate, so pure a flame, Is it a crime in yon sweet flower, I love thee, as I love the last I love thee, as I love the tone I love thee, as I love the first Young violet of the spring; Or the pale lily, April nursed, To scented blossoming. I love thee, as I love the fuli The hours of rest and dew, To blend their charm and hue. I love thee, as the glad bird loves I love thee, as I love the swell Such is the feeling which from thee : WOMAN'S LOVE. ERE the tongue ELIZA ACTON. Can utter, or the eye a wo reveal, Ir music be the food of love, play on! Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die.That strain again!—it had a dying fall: 333 Oh, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south, O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou! Receiveth as the sea,-naught enters there Even in a minute! So full of shapes is fancy, TO LOVE. SHAKSPERE. THOU blushing thing of pain and bliss! Which man immortal might have proved. HOGG. From ancient deeds of fair renown All manners smooths, informs all hearts, Passions that please and thoughts that melt; And tunes the warring world to peace. Thus armed 'gainst all that's light and vain, She fills the sphere by Heaven assigned, MOORE A LOVER'S PRAISE. -WHAT you do Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do And own no other function each your doing, Crowns what you're doing in the present deeds, LOVE'S EMPIRE. SHAKSPERE. HOLD there a moment, Love replied, Is there no province to invade But that by Love and meekness swayed? All other empire I resign; But be the sphere of beauty mine. I choose to love, and choose to reign. All smiling sisters, three times three; LOVE SECRETS. LOVE's eye should but answer the beam that invites it, Dear woman's the exquisite magnet of nature, Than the caution that Love should, if grateful display That name to the heart which sweet transport discloses THE SUPPLICATION. LEAVE me not yet! through rosy skies from far, Not yet! Oh, hark! low tones from hidden streams Piercing the shivery leaves e'en now arise; Their voices mingle not with day-light dreamsThey are of vesper's hymns and harmonies : Leave me not yet! My thoughts are like those gentle sounds, dear love, 'Tis something if in absence we can trace |