Amy Levy

What ails my senses thus to cheat
What is it ails the place,
That all the people in the street    Should wear one woman's face
The London trees are dusty-brown    Beneath the summer sky;

I
She, who so long has lain    Stone-stiff with folded wings,
Within my heart again    The brown bird wakes and sings
Brown nightingale, whose strain    Is heard by day, by night,

The sky is silver-grey; the long    Slow waves caress the shore
—On such a day as this I have been glad,    Who shall be glad no more

(In Memoriam
)They trod the streets and squares where now I tread,
With weary hearts, a little while ago;
When, thin and grey, the melancholy

O is it Love or is it Fame, This thing for which I sigh
Or has it then no earthly name For men to call it by
I know not what can ease my pains, Nor what it is I wish;
The passion at my heart-strings strains Like a tiger in a leash...

If I were a woman of old, What prayers I would pray for you, dear;
My pitiful tribute behold— Not a prayer, but a tear
The pitiless order of things, Whose laws we may change not nor break,
Alone I could face it—it wrings My heart fo...

LL things I can endure, save one
The bare, blank room where is no sun; The parcelled hours; the pallet hard; The dreary faces here within; The outer women's cold regard; The Pastor's iterated "sin";— These things could I endure, and...

This is the end of him, here he lies:
The dust in his throat, the worm in his eyes,
The mould in his mouth, the turf on his breast;
This is the end of him, this is best

(AN
HO
OM A
ER

It is so long gone by, and yet How clearly now I see it all
The glimmer of your cigarette, The little chamber, narrow and tall
Perseus; your picture in its frame; (How near they seem and yet how far
)The blaze of kindled logs; the f...

With Apologies to Mr
Swinburne
For repose I have sighed and have struggled ; have sigh'd and have struggled in vain;
I am held in the Circle of Being and caught in the Circle of Pain

OW like her
But 'tis she herself,      Comes up the crowded street,  How little did I think, the morn,    My only love to meet
Whose else that motion and that mien
Whose else that airy tread