Ralph Augustus Benson

“ That love once breathed so ardently
Should thus so soon grow less!
Then, by degrees, as passion cools,
So sordid worldly maxims rise;
And love is deemed a sport for fools,
And gold the only worthy prize ”

“ In the soft snare set by a clever coquette,
Only for something to say?
’Tis a glorious prowess, in sooth, with a word
To wound the trusting, and tame the proud,
Even as a leaf by a breath is stirr’d,
A spray by a dew-drop bow’d. ”

“ To seek it? ay, to win,—
Whom now (O pain all pain above!)
To think of is to sin.
He turns away, too stern for tears,
With haggard looks and wan,
A simple boy, it seems, in years,
In grief an agèd man.
Long life may yet be his, to give
The wreck of faith full scope,
Long years of suffering to live
And nurse the widow’d hope ”

“ You’re not too engaged to stay with me
A minute or two in the air?”
A look that had scorned the tenderest guile,
A heart that deem’d itself stern and strong,
Is bent to the light of a Psyche smile,
And chain’d by a syren-song. ”

“ Such the sad tale of husbands’ lives
I’ve gleaned beneath Sir Cresswell.
III.
No: since with feelings frail as ours
Love is but life’s bare duty,
In fancy let me cull the flowers
Before the shrine of beauty! ”

“ He will not linger near us
Neglected and content,
The baby-boy from Paphos
With bow for ever bent.
We may not furl his pinion
To serve us at our will,
When all the happy lovelight pales
And all the soul grows chill. ”

“ Dampier I felt too unwell to answer his note that evening, but that I would send an answer the following day. I held the door open, and listened to him as he descended the staircase with a step which sounded slow, even, and solemn as his voice. I waited two or three minutes till I thought he had reached a distance which would prevent me from overtaking him; then thrusting the letter into my pocket I turned out the lamp, shut the door, and left for a friend’s house, resolved not to enter my chambers again that night. ”

“ Of all his pen produces;
Grahams and Luftons win for me
Their Madelines and Lucies.
XVI.
Each new sensationist I skim,
Whose thrilling plots prevent your
Forgetting life’s a wayward whim,
And love a risky venture. ”

“ And you count your few hundreds per annum,
And their fractions at each Quarter-day.
And this, when you sum the case up, is
The result (though your feelings it hurts) ,—
All men are self-confident puppies,
All women are frivolous flirts! ”