Explore "Despair" by Edith Nesbit on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
SMILE on me, mouth of red -- so much too red, / Shine on me, eyes which darkened lashes shade, / Turn, turn my way, oh glorious golden head, / My soul is lost, then let the price be paid! / Amid rich flowers your rosy lamplight gleams, / Amid rich hangings pass your scented hours, / And woods and fields are green but in my dreams, / And only in my dreams grow meadow-flowers.
I have forgotten everything but you -- / The apple orchard where the whitethroat sings, / The quiet fields, the moonlight, and the dew, / The virgin's bower that in wet hedgerow clings.
I have forgotten how the cool grass waves / Where clean winds blow, and where good women pray / For happy, honest men, safe in their graves; / And -- oh, my God! I would I were as they!