Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Phantasmion. A Fairy Tale (1837). II. “One Face Alone”

Sarah Coleridge (1802–1850)

ONE face alone, one face alone,

These eyes require;

But, when that longed-for sight is shown,

What fatal fire

Shoots through my veins a keen and liquid flame,

That melts each fibre of my wasting frame.

One voice alone, one voice alone,

I pine to hear;

But, when its meek mellifluous tone

Usurps mine ear,

Those slavish chains about my soul are wound,

Which ne’er, till death itself, can be unbound.

One gentle hand, one gentle hand,

I fain would hold;

But, when it seems at my command,

My own grows cold;

Then low to earth I bend in sickly swoon,

Like lilies drooping ’mid the blaze of noon.