| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895. |
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| My Heart Is a Lute |
| | | Lady Blanche Elizabeth Lindsay (b. 1844) |
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| ALAS, that my heart is a lute, | |
| Whereon you have learn’d to play! | |
| For a many years it was mute, | |
| Until one summer’s day | |
| You took it, and touch’d it, and made it thrill, | 5 |
| And it thrills and throbs, and quivers still! | |
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| I had known you, dear, so long! | |
| Yet my heart did not tell me why | |
| It should burst one morn into song, | |
| And wake to new life with a cry, | 10 |
| Like a babe that sees the light of the sun, | |
| And for whom this great world has just begun. | |
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| Your lute is enshrin’d, cas’d in, | |
| Kept close with love’s magic key, | |
| So no hand but yours can win | 15 |
| And wake it to minstrelsy; | |
| Yet leave it not silent too long, nor alone, | |
| Lest the strings should break, and the music be done. | |
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