| Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907. | | | Phantasmion. A Fairy Tale (1837)
II. “One Face Alone” | | By Sarah Coleridge (1802–1850) |
| | (From Chapter VIII.)
ONE face alone, one face alone, | |
| These eyes require; | |
| But, when that longed-for sight is shown, | |
| What fatal fire | |
| Shoots through my veins a keen and liquid flame, | 5 |
| That melts each fibre of my wasting frame. | |
| |
| One voice alone, one voice alone, | |
| I pine to hear; | |
| But, when its meek mellifluous tone | |
| Usurps mine ear, | 10 |
| Those slavish chains about my soul are wound, | |
| Which ne’er, till death itself, can be unbound. | |
| |
| One gentle hand, one gentle hand, | |
| I fain would hold; | |
| But, when it seems at my command, | 15 |
| My own grows cold; | |
| Then low to earth I bend in sickly swoon, | |
| Like lilies drooping ’mid the blaze of noon. | | | | |
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