Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO CELIA, by THOMAS HOOD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO CELIA, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Old fictions say that love hath eyes
Last Line: Who hath no ugliness to hate.
Subject(s): Love - Nature Of


OLD fictions say that love hath eyes
Yet sees, unhappy boy! with none;
Blind as the night! but fiction lies,
For Love doth always see with one.

To one our graces all unveil,
To one our flaws are all exposed;
But when with tenderness we hail,
He smiles, and keeps the critic closed.

But when he's scorned, abused, estranged,
He opes the eye of evil ken,
And all his angel friends are changed
To demons -- and are hated then!

Yet once it happ'd that, semi-blind,
He met thee on a summer day,
And took thee for his mother kind,
And frown'd as he was push'd away.

But still he saw thee shine the same,
Though he had oped his evil eye
And found that nothing but her shame
Was left to know his mother by!

And ever since that morning sun
He thinks of thee, and blesses Fate
That he can look with both on one
Who hath no ugliness to hate.





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