Robert Fuller Murray (1863-1894)
Love's Phantom
1Whene'er I try to read a book,
2Across the page your face will look,
3And then I neither know nor care
4What sense the printed words may bear.
5At night when I would go to sleep,
6Thinking of you, awake I keep,
7And still repeat the words you said,
8Like sick men murmuring prayers in bed.
9And when, with weariness oppressed:
10I sink in spite of you to rest,
11Your image, like a lovely sprite,
12Haunts me in dreams through half the night.
13I wake upon the autumn morn
14To find the sunrise hardly-born,
15And in the sky a soft pale blue,
16And in my heart your image true.
17When out I walk to take the air,
18Your image is for ever there,
19Among the woods that lose their leaves,
20Or where the North Sea sadly heaves.
21By what enchantment shall be laid
22This ghost, which does not make afraid,
23But vexes with dim loveliness
24And many a shadowy caress?
25There is no other way I know
26But unto you forthwith to go,
27That I may look upon the maid
28Whereof that other is the shade.
29As the strong sun puts out the moon,
30Whose borrowed rays are all his own,
31So, in your living presence, dies
32The phantom kindled at your eyes.
33By this most blessed spell, each day
34The vexing ghost awhile I lay.
35Yet am I glad to know that when
36I leave you it will rise again.
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: Robert F. Murray: his Poems, with a memoir by Andrew Lang
(London: Longmans, Green, 1894): 10-12. PR 5101 M5A6 1894 Robarts Library
First publication date:
1894
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: 2001
Recent editing: 1:2002/10/5
Rhyme: aabb
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