love poem

Give end unto thy pastimes, Love,
Before thy labours prove:
A little rest between
Will make thy next shows better seen.
Now let them close their eyes, and see
If they can dream of thee,
Since morning hastes to come in view;
And all the morning dreams are true.
(from Love Restored)

Have men beheld the graces dance,
Or seen the upper orbs to move?
So did these turn, return, advance,
Drawn back by doubt, put on by love.
And now, like earth, themselves they fix,
Till greater powers vouchsafe to mix
Their motions with them. Do not fear,
You brighter planets of this sphere;
Not one male heart you see
But rather to his female eyes
Would die a destined sacrifice
Than live at home and free.
(from Love Restored)

This motion was of love begot
It was so airy, light and good,
His wings into their feet he shot,
Or else himself into their blood.
But ask not how. The end will prove
That love's in them, or they're in love.
(from Love Restored)

O how came Love, that is himself a fire,
To be so cold!
Yes, tyran' money quencheth all desire,
Or makes it old.
But here are beauties will revive
Love's youth and keep his heat alive:
As often as his torch here dies,
He needs but light it at fresh eyes.
Joy, joy the more; for in all courts
If Love be cold, so are his sports.
(from Love Restored)

We travelled in the print of olden wars,
Yet all the land was green,
And love we found, and peace,
Where fire and war had been.

They pass and smile, the children of the sword —
No more the sword they wield;
And O, how deep the corn
Along the battle-field!1 From Travels with a Donkey .

VI

Within the surface of Time's fleeting river
Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay
Immovably unquiet, and for ever
It trembles, but it cannot pass away!
The voices of thy bards and sages thunder
With an earth-awakening blast
Through the caverns of the past:
(Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast:)

Translated from the German

Ah! grasp the dire dagger and couch the fell spear,
If vengeance and death to thy bosom be dear,
The dastard shall perish, death's torment shall prove,
For fate and revenge are decreed from above.

Ah! where is the hero, whose nerves strung by youth,
Will defend the firm cause of justice and truth;
With insatiate desire whose bosom shall swell,
To give up the oppressor to judgement and Hell —

For him shall the fair one twine chaplets of bays,
To him shall each warrior give merited praise,

LOVE

What if a soul redeemed, a spirit that loved
While yet on earth and was beloved in turn,
And still remembered every look and tone
Of that dear earthly sister who was left
Among the unwise virgins at the gate, —
Itself admitted with the bridegroom's train, —
What if this spirit redeemed, amid the host
Of chanting angels, in some transient lull
Of the eternal anthem, heard the cry
Of its lost darling, whom in evil hour
Some wilder pulse of nature led astray

IX

Him loved she. Lo, now was he veiled:
Over sea stood a swelled cloud-rack:
The fishing-boat havenward sailed,
Bent abeam with a whitened track,
Surprised, fast hauling the net,
As it flew: sea dashed, earth shook.
She said: Is it night? O not yet!
With a travail of thoughts in her look.
The mountain heaved up to its peak:
Sea darkened: earth gathered her fowl:
Of bird or of branch rose the shriek.
Night? but never so fell a scowl
Wore night, nor the sky since then

Higher far,
Upward into the pure realm,
Over sun and star,
Over the flickering Daemon film,
Thou must mount for love;
Into vision where all form
In one only form dissolves;
In a region where the wheel
On which all beings ride
Visibly revolves;
Where the starred, eternal worm
Girds the world with bound and term;
Where unlike things are like;
Where good and ill,
And joy and moan,
Melt into one.

There Past, Present, Future shoot
Triple blossoms from one root;