John Payne (poet)

John Payne (23 August 1842 – 11 February 1916) was an English poet and translator. Initially he pursued a legal career and had associated with Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Later he became involved with limited edition publishing and the Villon Society.

Quotes

• Straight and swift the swallows fly
  To the sojourn of the sun;
  All the golden year is done,
  All the flower-time flitted by;
  Thro’ the boughs the witch-winds sigh;
  But heart’s summer is begun;
  Life and love at last are one;
  Love-lights glitter in the sky.
  Summer days were soon outrun
  With the setting of the sun;
  Love’s delight is never done.
  Let the turn-coat roses die;
  We are lovers, Love and I;
  In Love’s lips my roses lie.
  • "Rococo" in Intaglios: Sonnets (1871)

• About a well-spring, in a little mead,
    Of tender grasses full and flow’rets fair,
    There sat three youngling angels as it were
  Their loves recounting; and for each, indeed,
  Her sweet face shaded, ’gainst the noonday need,
    A spray of green, that bound her golden hair;
    Whilst, in and out by turns, a frolic air
  The two clear colours blended at its heed.
  And one, after a little, thus heard I
    Say to her mates, ‘Lo, if by chance there lit
  The lovers of each one of us hereby,
    Should we flee hence for fear or quiet sit?’
  Whereto the twain made answer, ‘Who should fly
    From such a fortune sure were scant of wit.’
  • "Of Three Damsels in a Meadow"; quoted in The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse (1912), no. 483