A Few Victorian Poetic Pieces

[Rhyme for a Child Viewing a Naked Venus in a Painting of 'The Judgment of Paris']

He gazed and gazed and gazed and gazed,
Amazed, amazed, amazed, amazed.

--- Robert Browning (c. 1872)

Rondeau

Jenny kissed me when we met,

   Jumping from the chair she sat in;

Time, you thief, who love to get

   Sweets into your list, put that in:

Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,

   Say that health and wealth have missed me,

Say I'm growing old, but add,

   Jenny kissed me.

--- Leigh Hunt (1832)

Note from Dr. J: Some of you may have seen the above poem on advertisements for Poetry on the Way on the TTC or other local Canadian transit systems. It is inaccurately printed there with exclamation marks that are not usually associated with the poem, and is given the false title 'Jenny kissed me.'

Pastel: Masks and Faces

The light of our cigarettes
Went and came in the gloom:
It was dark in the room.

Dark, and then, in the dark,
Sudden, a flash, a glow,
And a hand and a ring I know.

And then, through the dark, a flush
Ruddy and vague, the grace
(A rose!) of her lyric face.

--- Arthur Symons (c.1890)

An Evening

A SUNSET's mounded cloud;

   A diamond evening-star;

   Sad blue hills afar;

      Love in his shroud.

Scarcely a tear to shed;

   Hardly a word to say;

   The end of a summer day;

      Sweet Love dead.

-- William Allingham (1888)

The Kiss

'I saw you take his kiss!'  ''Tis true.'

   'O modesty!'  ''Twas strictly kept:

'He thought me asleep; at least, I knew

   'He thought I thought he thought I slept.'

--- Coventry Patmore (c. 1850?)

Some lovely little pieces, aren't they? And yet these days we're used to such little poetic pieces being no better than Hallmark material.