A Clasp Of Hands
Algernon Charles Swinburne
SOFT, small, and sweet as sunniest flowers
That bask in heavenly heat
When bud by bud breaks, breathes, and cowers,
Soft, small, and sweet.
A babe's hands open as to greet
The tender touch of ours
And mock with motion faint and fleet
The minutes of the new strange hours
That earth, not heaven, must mete;
Buds fragrant still from heaven's own bowers,
Soft, small, and sweet.
A velvet vice with springs of steel
That fasten in a trice
And clench the fingers fast that feel
A velvet viceŃ
What man would risk the danger twice,
Nor quake from head to heel?
Whom would not one such test suffice?
Well may we tremble as we kneel
In sight of Paradise,
If both a babe's closed fists conceal
A velvet vice.
Two flower-soft fists of conquering clutch,
Two creased and dimpled wrists,
That match, if mottled overmuch,
Two flower-soft fists---
What heart of man dare hold the lists
Against such odds and such
Sweet vantage as no strength resists?
Our strength is all a broken crutch,
Our eyes are dim with mists,
Our hearts are prisoners as we touch
Two flower-soft fists.
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Here Are Our Top Love Poems...
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I Would Live in Your Love
by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
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by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61)
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Song
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To a Butterfly
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Sonnet From the Portuguese V
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61)
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O Mistress Mine by William Shakespeare
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My Pretty Rose Tree by William Blake
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One Day I Wrote Her Name by Edmund Spenser
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Tell me not, Sweet, by Richard Lovelace
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The Dream by Edna St. Vincent Millay
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The Dream by Edna St. Vincent Millay
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We Are Seven by William Wordsworth
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Mag by Carl Sandburg
Love Poems 27
Ebb by Edna St. Vincent Millay
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I Sing by Emily Dickinson
Love Poems 29
For Each Ecstatic Instant by Emily Dickinson
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Love Not Me by John Wilbye
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Mild Is The Parting Year by Walter Savage Landor