Explore "The Lost Mistress" by Robert Browning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
All 's over, then: does truth sound bitter / As one at first believes? / Hark, 'tis the sparrows' good-night twitter / About your cottage eaves!
And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly, / I noticed that, to-day; / One day more bursts them open fully / -- You know the red turns gray.
To-morrow we meet the same then, dearest? / May I take your hand in mine? / Mere friends are we, -- well, friends the merest / Keep much that I resign:
For each glance of the eye so bright and black / Though I keep with heart's endeavor, -- / Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back, / Though it stay in my soul forever! --
Yet I will but say what mere friends say, / Or only a thought stronger; / I will hold your hand but as long as all may, / Or so very little longer!