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

By Phantasmion. A Fairy Tale (1837). VII. “False Love, too long thou hast delay’d”

Sarah Coleridge (1802–1850)

(From Chapter XXII.)

FALSE Love, too long thou hast delay’d,

Too late I make my choice;

Yet win for me that precious maid,

And bid my heart rejoice:

Then shall mine eyes shoot youthful fire,

My cheek with triumph glow,

And other maids that glance desire,

Which I on one bestow.

Make her with smile divinely bland

Beam sunshine o’er my face,

And Time shall touch with gentlest hand

What she hath deigned to grace;

O’er scanty locks full wreaths I’ll wear;

No wrinkled brow to shade,

For joy will smooth the furrows there,

Which earlier griefs have made.

Though sports of youth be tedious toil,

When youth has pass’d away,

I’ll cast aside the martial spoil

With her light locks to play;

Yea, turn, sweet maid, from tented field

To rove where dew-drops shine,

Nor care what hand the sceptre wield,

So thou wilt grant me thine.