Two Lovers / George Eliot

Two lovers by a moss-grown spring:

They leaned soft cheeks together there,

Mingled the dark and sunny hair,

And heard the wooing thrushes sing.

O budding time!

O love's blest prime!

The Legend of Jubal / George Eliot

When Cain was driven from Jehovah's land

He wandered eastward, seeking some far strand

Ruled by kind gods who asked no offerings

Save pure field-fruits, as aromatic things,

To feed the subtler sense of frames divine

That lived on fragrance for their food and wine:

Wild joyous gods, who winked at faults and folly,

And could be pitiful and melancholy.

Sweet Endings Come and Go, Love / George Eliot

"La noche buena se viene,

La noche buena se va,

Y nosotros nos iremos

Y no volveremos mas."

~ Old Villancico.

Sweet evenings come and go, love,

They came and went of yore:

This evening of our life, love,

Shall go and come no more.

Roses / George Eliot

You love the roses--so do I. I wish

The sky would rain down roses, as they rain

From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?

Then all the valley would be pink and white

And soft to tread on. They would fall as light

As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be

Like sleeping and like waking, all at once!

O May I Join the Choir Invisible! / George Eliot

O may I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again

In minds made better by their presence; live

In pulses stirred to generosity,

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn

Of miserable aims that end with self,

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,

And with their mild persistence urge men's minds

To vaster issues.

Mid My Gold-Brown Curls / George Eliot

'Mid my gold-brown curls

There twined a silver hair:

I plucked it idly out

And scarcely knew 'twas there.

Coiled in my velvet sleeve it lay

And like a serpent hissed:

"Me thou canst pluck & fling away,

One hair is lightly missed;

But how on that near day

When all the wintry army muster in array?"

In a London Drawingroom / George Eliot

The sky is cloudy, yellowed by the smoke.

For view there are the houses opposite

Cutting the sky with one long line of wall

Like solid fog: far as the eye can stretch

Monotony of surface & of form

Without a break to hang a guess upon.

I Grant You Ample Leave / George Eliot

"I grant you ample leave

To use the hoary formula 'I am'

Naming the emptiness where thought is not;

But fill the void with definition, 'I'

Will be no more a datum than the words

You link false inference with, the 'Since' & 'so'

That, true or not, make up the atom-whirl.

How Lisa Loved the King / George Eliot

Six hundred years ago, in Dante's time,

Before his cheek was furrowed by deep rhyme;

When Europe, fed afresh from Eastern story,

Was like a garden tangled with the glory

Of flowers hand-planted and of flowers air-sown,

Climbing and trailing, budding and full-blown,

Where purple bells are tossed amid pink stars,

And springing blades, green troops in innocent wars,

Crowd every shady spot of teeming earth,

Making invisible motion visible birth,--

God Needs Antonio / George Eliot

Your soul was lifted by the wings today

Hearing the master of the violin:

You praised him, praised the great Sabastian too

Who made that fine Chaconne; but did you think

Of old Antonio Stradivari?--him

Who a good century and a half ago

Put his true work in that brown instrument

And by the nice adjustment of its frame

Gave it responsive life, continuous

With the master's finger-tips and perfected

Like them by delicate rectitude of use.

Count That Day Lost / George Eliot

If you sit down at set of sun

And count the acts that you have done,

And, counting, find

One self-denying deed, one word

That eased the heart of him who heard,

One glance most kind

That fell like sunshine where it went--

Then you may count that day well spent.

Brother and Sister / George Eliot

I.

I cannot choose but think upon the time

When our two lives grew like two buds that kiss

At lightest thrill from the bee's swinging chime,

Because the one so near the other is.

He was the elder and a little man

Of forty inches, bound to show no dread,

And I the girl that puppy-like now ran,

Now lagged behind my brother's larger tread.