I'm not a single man.

Shut out from love, denied a dove,
Forbidden bow and dart;
Without a groan to call my own,
With neither hand nor heart;
To Hymen vowed, and not allowed
To flirt e'en with your fan,
Here end, as just a friend, I must -
I'm not a single man.

Thomas Hood [1799-1845]


TO ---

We met but in one giddy dance,
Good-night joined hands with greeting;
And twenty thousand things may chance
Before our second meeting;
For oh! I have been often told
That all the world grows older,
And hearts and hopes to-day so cold,
To-morrow must be colder.

If I have never touched the string
Beneath your chamber, dear one,
And never said one civil thing
When you were by to hear one, -
If I have made no rhymes about