| Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907. | | | Phantasmion. A Fairy Tale (1837)
VII. “False Love, too long thou hast delay’d” | | By 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, | 5 |
| My cheek with triumph glow, | |
| And other maids that glance desire, | |
| Which I on one bestow. | |
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| Make her with smile divinely bland | |
| Beam sunshine o’er my face, | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| Which earlier griefs have made. | |
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| 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; | 20 |
| 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. | | | | |
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