Poem by Thomas Hood

Sonnet (Love, dearest Lady, such as I would speak)

Love, dearest Lady, such as I would speak,
Lives not within the humor of the eye;—
Not being but an outward phantasy,
That skims the surface of a tinted cheek,—
Else it would wane with beauty, and grow weak,
As if the rose made summer,—and so lie
Amongst the perishable things that die,
Unlike the love which I would give and seek:
Whose health is of no hue—to feel decay
With cheeks' decay, that have a rosy prime.
Love is its own great loveliness alway,
And takes new lustre from the touch of time;
Its bough owns no December and no May,
But bears its blossom into Winter's clime.

1. Written in Keats' “Endymion”
2. The Two Peacocks of Bedfont
3. Song (The stars are with the voyager)
4. Ode on a Distant Prospect of Clapham Academy
5. The Two Swans

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