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Home  »  The English Poets  »  Extracts from The Angel in the House: Love at Large

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896)

Extracts from The Angel in the House: Love at Large

WHENE’ER I come where ladies are,

How sad soever I was before,

Though like a ship frost-bound and far

Withheld in ice from the ocean’s roar,

Third-winter’d in that dreadful dock,

With stiffen’d cordage, sails decay’d,

And crew that care for calm and shock

Alike, too dull to be dismay’d,

Yet, if I come where ladies are,

How sad soever I was before,

Then is my sadness banish’d far,

And I am like that ship no more;

Or like that ship if the ice-field splits,

Burst by the sudden polar Spring,

And all thank God with their warming wits,

And kiss each other and dance and sing,

And hoist fresh sails, that make the breeze

Blow them along the liquid sea,

Out of the North, where life did freeze,

Into the haven where they would be.