title: A Valentine
author: Clement Clarke Moore
date: 1843 (Feb.)
source: Museum of the City of New York, Poetry Manuscript Book of Clement C. Moore, accession 54.331.1 (7662), notebook pp. 095-097; transcribed by Mary S. Van Deusen, henrylivingston.com, fetched via the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/2024/https://www.henrylivingston.com/xmas/livingstonmoore/moorevalentine-mss.htm
form: iambic tetrameter/trimeter sestets (aabccb: two tetrameter couplets closed by trimeter)
lines: 48
attribution: certain
notes: MS heading: 'Written, at the request of some of my children, to be sent to one of their friends, as a valentine. Feb. 1843'. Addressed to 'fair Eleanor' from her 'Damon'; conventional Valentine with folk love-divinations. Light-serious. Distinct from 'Lines for Valentine's Day' in Poems (1844). Site line count 48 agrees. Not listed in the site's Jackson phoneme data set (data/favoredphonemes/moore/), consistent with Jackson (2016) reportedly treating the MCNY notebook poems as held-back Moore texts; not independently verified against Jackson's book.

All Nature, bound in icy chain,
Now strives her freedom to regain,
And breathe a kindlier air.
Soon shall the cooing of the dove,
With other notes of joy and love,
The coming Spring declare.

The sun darts forth a warmer ray,
And calls, throughout the length'ning day,
Upon the sleeping flowers.
All living creatures seem to feel
An influence thro' their senses steal
That renovates their powers.

The softness of the op'ning year
Renders, to youthful swains, more dear
The ties that bind their hearts.
And gentle maidens, doubtful still,
More anxiously exert their skill
In all their magic arts:

They fasten seeds upon their eyes,
Nam'd after lovers whom they prize,
And watch the first that's loose.
They snap the tender merry-thought,
To see who soonest shall be caught
In Hymen's silken noose.

They swing the apple-peel around,
And, from its figures on the ground,
Spell out their destin'd mate.
The inverted cup they twirl about,
And, in the tea grounds, gather out
The secrets of their fate.

While all grows mild, above, below;
And even fiercest storms that blow
Their bitter rage arrest;
While Love asserts his gentle reign
O'er earth and skies, o'er hill and plain,
In ev'ry living breast,

Wilt thou, fair Eleanor, alone
No tender impulse ever own,
To change thy lover's doom?
Let not the spring-time of thy year
Continue cold, and waste and drear,
When all around shall bloom.

While frost-bound streams begin to melt,
And genial influence is felt
Throughout all Nature's reign,
Ah! soften at thy Damon's woe,
Nor let stern Winter's ice and snow
About thy heart remain.