The collected poems of Edmund Gosse Author:Edmund Gosse Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: FORTUNATE LOVE IN SONNETS AND RONDELS I FIRST SIGHT When first we met the nether world was white And on the steel-blue ice before her bower I skated in... more » the sunrise for an hour, Till all the grey horizon, gulphed in light, Was red against the bare boughs black as night; Then suddenly her sweet face like a flower, Enclosed in sables from the frost's dim power, Shone at her casement, and flushed burning bright When first we met! My skating being done, I loitered home, And sought that day to lose her face again ; But Love was weaving in his golden loom My story up with hers, and all in vain I strove to lose the threads he spun amain, When first we met. II ELATION Like to some dreaming and unworldly child Who sits at sunset in the mist of hope, When all the windows of the west lie ope, Flooding the air with splendour undefiled, And sees, by fancy in a trance beguiled, An angel mount the perilous burning slope, Winning the opal and the sapphire cope, And laughs for very joy and yearning wild;— So I, in whose awakening spirit Love Rules uninvited, not to be controlled, Am happiest when I struggle not, but hold My windows open and my heart above, Watching, with soul not bowed nor overbold, The stately air with which his footsteps move. HI IN CHURCH-TIME I Took my flute among the primroses . That lined the hill along the brown church-wall, For she was there ; till shades began to fall, I piped my songs out like a bird at ease, When suddenly the distant litanies Ceased, and she came, and passed beyond recall, And left me throbbing, heart and lips and all, And vanished down the vistaed cypress-trees; Ah! sweet, that motion of harmonious limbs Drove all my folly hence, but left me faint I Oh ! be not, my desi...« less