Explore "To a Girl" by Frederic Manning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
(MISS E. F.)
Thy face, which love renews ever with loveliness, / Is known and strange as earth, from night each dawn is new: / Stirred with such restless beauty / As water that wind shadoweth.
How may love snare thy soul, or know the ways thereof?
Subtile as flame it is, and secret as the dews: / Even thus closely folded / Love hath thee not, but followeth.
From change to change, nor surfeiteth his ecstasy / That from so brief a joy desireth new delight, / As tho' the sweet life in thee / Were fugitive and bodiless.
Nay, love, in thee all change immortal is; nor dies, / Being the soul of thee that pastures on brief joy: / And this earth's shows mere seeming / In thy clear love's eternity.