Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti
Lord Byron (17881824)Stanzas: Could Love for ever
C
Run like a river,
And Time’s endeavour
Be tried in vain—
No other pleasure
With this could measure;
And like a treasure
We’d hug the chain.
But since our sighing
Ends not in dying,
And, form’d for flying,
Love plumes his wing;
Then for this reason
Let ’s love a season;
But let that season be only Spring.
Feel broken-hearted,
And, all hopes thwarted,
Expect to die;
A few years older,
Ah! how much colder
They might behold her
For whom they sigh!
When link’d together,
In every weather,
They pluck Love’s feather
From out his wing—
He ’ll stay for ever,
But sadly shiver
Without his plumage, when past the Spring.
(1819.)