The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Victories of Love, by Coventry Patmore,
Edited by Henry Morley

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Title: The Victories of Love
and Other Poems

Author: Coventry Patmore

Editor: Henry Morley

Release Date: December 30, 2007 [eBook #4009]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VICTORIES OF LOVE***

Transcribed from the 1888 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org

CASSELL'S NATIONAL LIBRARY.

THE
VICTORIES OF LOVE,
AND OTHER POEMS.

BY
COVENTRY PATMORE.

CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
_LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.
1888.

CONTENTS:

The Victories Of Love
Amelia
The Day After To-Morrow
The Azalea
Departure
The Toys
If I Were Dead
A Farewell
Sponsa Dei
The Rosy Bosom'd Hours
Eros

INTRODUCTION

After the very cordial reception given to the poems of "The Angel in the
House," which their author generously made accessible to the readers of
these little books, it is evident that another volume from the same clear
singer of the purity of household love requires no Introduction.

I have only, in the name of the readers, to thank Mr. Coventry Patmore
for his liberality, and wish him--say, rather, assure him of--the best
return he seeks in a wide influence for good.

H. M.

THE VICTORIES OF LOVE.

BOOK I.

I. FROM FREDERICK GRAHAM.

Mother, I smile at your alarms!
I own, indeed, my Cousin's charms,
But, like all nursery maladies,
Love is not badly taken twice.
Have you forgotten Charlotte Hayes,
My playmate in the pleasant days
At Knatchley, and her sister, Anne,
The twins, so made on the same plan,
That one wore blue, the other white,
To mark them to their father's sight;
And how, at Knatchley harvesting,
You bade me kiss her in the ring,
Like Anne and all the others? You,
That never of my sickness knew,
Will laugh, yet had I the disease,
And gravely, if the signs are these:
As, ere the Spring has any power,
The almond branch all turns to flower,
Though not a leaf is out, so she
The bloom of life provoked in me
And, hard till then and selfish, I
Was thenceforth nought