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Loving In Truth, And Fain In Verse My Love To Show

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That She, dear She, might take some pleasure of my pain,
—Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain—
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburnt brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay;
Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows;

Lovest Thou Me

(John, xxi.16)

Hark my soul! it is the Lord;
'Tis Thy Saviour, hear His word;
Jesus speaks and speaks to thee,
"Say poor sinner, lovst thou me?

"I deliver'd thee when bound,
And when bleeding, heal'd thy wound;
Sought thee wandering, set thee right,
Turn'd thy darkness into light.

"Can a woman's tender care
Cease towards the child she bare?
Yes, she may forgetful be,
Yet will I remember thee.

"Mine is an unchanging love,
Higher than the heights above,
Deeper than the depths beneath,

Love's Deity

I long to talk with some old lover's ghost,
Who died before the god of love was born.
I cannot think that he, who then lov'd most,
Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn.
But since this god produc'd a destiny,
And that vice-nature, custom, lets it be,
I must love her, that loves not me.

Sure, they which made him god, meant not so much,
Nor he in his young godhead practis'd it.
But when an even flame two hearts did touch,
His office was indulgently to fit
Actives to passives. Correspondency
Only his subject was; it cannot be

Lover's Gifts XLIV Where Is Heaven

Where is heaven? you ask me, my child,-the sages tell us it is
beyond the limits of birth and death, unswayed by the rhythm of day
and night; it is not of the earth.
But your poet knows that its eternal hunger is for time and
space, and it strives evermore to be born in the fruitful dust.
Heaven is fulfilled in your sweet body, my child, in your
palpitating heart.
The sea is beating its drums in joy, the flowers are a-tiptoe
to kiss you. For heaven is born in you, in the arms of the mother-
dust.

Lover's Gifts XLII Are You a Mere Picture

Are you a mere picture, and not as true as those stars, true as
this dust? They throb with the pulse of things, but you are
immensely aloof in your stillness, painted form.
The day was when you walked with me, your breath warm, your
limbs singing of life. My world found its speech in your voice, and
touched my heart with your face. You suddenly stopped in your walk,
in the shadow-side of the Forever, and I went on alone.
Life, like a child, laughs, shaking its rattle of death as it
runs; it beckons me on, I follow the unseen; but you stand there,

Lover's Gifts LXX Take Back Your Coins

Take back your coins, King's Councillor. I am of those women you
sent to the forest shrine to decoy the young ascetic who had never
seen a women. I failed in your bidding.
Dimly day was breaking when the hermit boy came to bathe in
the stream, his tawny locks crowded on his shoulders, like a
cluster of morning clouds, and his limbs shining like a streak of
sunbeam. We laughed and sang as we rowed in our boat; we jumped
into the river in a mad frolic, and danced around him, when the sun
rose staring at us from the water's edge in a flush of divine

Lover's Gifts LVIII Things Throng and Laugh

Things throng and laugh loud in the sky; the sands and dust dance
and whirl like children. Man's mind is aroused by their shouts; his
thoughts long to be the playmates of things.
Our dreams, drifting in the stream of the vague, stretch their
arms to clutch the earth, -their efforts stiffen into bricks and
stones, and thus the city of man is built.
Voices come swarming from the past,-seeking answers from the
living moments. Beats of their wings fill the air with tremulous
shadows, and sleepless thoughts in our minds leave their nests to

Love will find out the Way

OVER the mountains
   And over the waves,
Under the fountains
   And under the graves;
Under floods that are deepest,
   Which Neptune obey,
Over rocks that are steepest,
   Love will find out the way.

When there is no place
   For the glow-worm to lie,
When there is no space
   For receipt of a fly;
When the midge dares not venture
   Lest herself fast she lay,
If Love come, he will enter

Love song--heine

Many a beauteous flower doth spring
From the tears that flood my eyes,
And the nightingale doth sing
In the burthen of my sighs.

If, O child, thou lovest me,
Take these flowerets fair and frail,
And my soul shall waft to thee
Love songs of the nightingale.

Love Poem

Yours is the face that the earth turns to me,
Continuous beyond its human features lie
The mountain forms that rest against the sky.
With your eyes, the reflecting rainbow, the sun's light
Sees me; forest and flower, bird and beast
Know and hold me forever in the world's thought,
Creation's deep untroubled retrospect.

When your hand touches mine it is the earth
That takes me--the green grass,
And rocks and rivers; the green graves,
And children still unborn, and ancestors,
In love passed down from hand to hand from God.