love poem

HAVING RECEIVED SOME FAVOUR, A GLANCE OR SALUTATION, HE TURNS HIS CURSES INTO BLESSINGS

Blest be the day, and blest the month and year,
Season and hour and very moment blest,
The lovely land and place where first possessed
By two pure eyes I found me prisoner;
And blest the first sweet pain, the first most dear,
Which burned my heart when Love came in as guest;
And blest the bow, the shafts which shook my breast,
And even the wounds which Love delivered there.
Blest be the words and voices which filled grove

WHEREIN HE DEPICTS THE MISERY OF PHoeBUS AT THE LOSS OF HIS LOVE

Nine times already had Latona's son
Gazed from the topmost balcony of heaven
For her who shook his breast with sighs; so even
This instant others are with sighs undone;
Then searching wearily, his great eyes run
Hither and thither for some sign or haven;
Ignorant where she lives, like a wild raven
He glared, grief-crazed, for his beloved one;
And so, the clouds of anguish intervening,
Saw not the sweet face turn, which, if I live,

WHEREIN HE PURSUES SOLITUDE, BUT LOVE SHADOWS HIM EVERYWHITHER

Alone, thought-sick, I pace where none has been,
Roaming the desert with dull steps and slow,
And still glance warily about to know
If the herd follows, if the world has seen:
How else the hoofprint of the Philistine
Escape, but in some cave with grief to go!
I look distraught and haggard: I must show
No one how keen Love's tooth is, O how keen!
Meseems the very mountains and the shores,
Rivers and woods must guess the secret I

TO STRAMAZZO OF PERUGIA, WHO INVITED HIM TO WRITE VERSES

If the proud branch, whose honoured leaf defies
The fury of Heaven when Jove thunders loud,
Had not prevented me from being proud
By keeping me uncrowned, my ardent eyes
Should bend with you in your idolatries,
To which our craven age has never bowed;
Alas, that laurelled injury has cowed
My spirit and forced me from the olive trees!
For Ethiopian earth beneath its sun
Never with such heat hissed, as burns my drouth
At loss of what I set my soul upon.

WHEREIN HE CHIDES LOVE THAT COULD WOUND HIM ON A HOLY DAY (GOOD FRIDAY)

It was the morning of that blessed day
Whereon the Sun in pity veiled his glare
For the Lord's agony, that, unaware,
I fell a captive, Lady, to the sway
Of your swift eyes: that seemed no time to stay
The strokes of Love: I stepped into the snare
Secure, with no suspicion: then and there
I found my cue in man's most tragic play.
Love caught me naked to his shaft, his sheaf,
The entrance for his ambush and surprise

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
All pray in their distress:
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
Is God, our Father dear:
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face;
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine:
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

8. The Phaenix.
There comes on wide wings a bird from the Westward.
He flies to Eastward,
To his garden home in the Orient,
Where grow the spices, perfumed, luxuriant,
And palm trees rustle and springs shed freshness,
And flying, the wonder-bird is singing:
" She loves him! She loves him! "
She bears in her little heart his image,
She bears the sweet and deep-hidden secret,
And herself knows not!
But in her dream before her he stands,
She kisses his hands with beseeching and weeping,

7. At Night in the Cabin.
The sea hath its pearls,
The Heaven hath its stars;
And my heart, my heart,
My heart hath its love.

Great are the sea, and the Heaven,
But greater still my heart;
And fairer than pearls or than starlight
Is the radiance of my love.

O little girl, my darling,
Come thou to my great heart;
My heart, and the sea, and the Heaven
Are fainting, are dying for love.

*****

On the azure vault of Heaven,
Where the lovely stars are twinkling;

XLVI

At last we parley: we so strangely dumb
In such a close communion! It befell
About the sounding of the Matin-bell,
And lo! her place was vacant, and the hum
Of loneliness was round me. Then I rose,
And my disordered brain did guide my foot
To that old wood where our first love-salute
Was interchanged: the source of many throes!
There did I see her, not alone. I moved
Toward her, and made proffer of my arm.
She took it simply, with no rude alarm;

XLIV

They say, that Pity in Love's service dwells,
A porter at the rosy temple's gate.
I missed him going: but it is my fate
To come upon him now beside his wells;
Whereby I know that I Love's temple leave,
And that the purple doors have closed behind.
Poor soul! if in those early days unkind,
Thy power to sting had been but power to grieve,
We now might with an equal spirit meet,
And not be matched like innocence and vice.
She for the Temple's worship has paid price,