love poem

After Hadewijch of Anvers, thirteenth century

If your days swirled to chaos, wouldn't you turn
to someone on whose shoulder you could weep?
St. Paul says it's better to marry than to burn.
Wouldn't you choose the solace of escape
into the brief banquet of tenderness?
My widowed minister, with three motherless
children; my dear, whom my friends think is odd
(some even think my Calvin may be mad):

What is gentlest in love is love's violence.
Losing yourself in love, you reach love's goal.

Thomas Edison loved a doll
with a tiny phonograph inside
because he made her speak.

Is there any other reason
to love a woman? Did she say
the ghost of my conception.

or something equally demure?
It's hard to be sure how he feels
when he holds me, I fall apart.

I'm projecting here. He didn't feel
her first transgression
was in having no expression.

Rene Descartes, too, traveled alone
with a doll-in-a-box
he called his daughter. Francine ,

O Thou whose boundless love bestows
The joy of life, the hope of Heaven;
Thou whose unchartered mercy flows
O'er all the blessings Thou hast given;
Thou by whose light alone we see;
Thou by whose truth our souls set free
Are made imperishably strong;
Hear Thou the solemn music of our song.

Grant us the knowledge that we need
To solve the questions of the mind;
Light Thou our candle while we read,
And keep our hearts from going blind;
Enlarge our vision to behold
The wonders Thou hast wrought of old;

Years are coming, years are going, creeds may change and pass away,
But the power of love is growing stronger, surer, day by day,
Be ye as the light of morning, like the beauteous dawn unfold,
With your radiant lives adorning all the world in hues of gold.
Selfish claims will soon no longer raise their harsh, discordant sounds,
For the law of love will conquer, bursting hatred's narrow bounds;
Human love will spread a glory filling men with gladsome mirth,
Songs of joy proclaim the story of a fair, transfigured earth.

Domestic love sits brooding o'er th' hearth,
Like the fair cushat o'er the forest-boughs;
And happiness unto thy home is bound
Close as the fragrance to the summer rose:
For woman's angel purity is there,
And woman's hand so soft and face so fair,
And woman's heart of love, and voice of song
Soft as the linnet's hedgerow leaves among.
This heart so glad with thee in moments past,
Can wish for thee no better than thou hast:
But in this silent hour, when earth is gray,

To ward off Time's abuses
The name is set above,
By one who loves the Muses,
Of one the Muses love.

Among the windy spaces
The star-buds grow to light;
With pale and weeping faces
The day-hours bow to night;
Where down the gusty valleys
A blast of thunder dies,
And in the forest alleys
A startled night-bird cries.

Not pain but bitter pleasure
Surrounds my spirit here,
For life's supernal treasure
Is garlanded with fear;
Bright trees delight the garden
About my love's glad home,
But all the flower-roots harden
Under the frost of doom.

Like the bright stars above me

Al ye wh├Á loue or fortune hath betraide,
All ye that dreame of blisse but liue in greif,
Al ye whose hopes are euermore delaid,
Al ye whose sighes or sicknes wants releife:
Lend eares and teares to me most haples man,
That sings my sorrowes like the dying Swanne.

Care that consumes the heart with inward paine,
Paine that presents sad care in outward vew,
Both tyrant like enforce me to complaine,
But still in vaine, for none my plaints will rue,
Teares, sighes, and ceaseles cries alone I spend,

Apples of gold the Hero dropt
As he was in the race outstript;
And Atalanta, running, stopt,
And all her lovely body dipt
A moment; but she lost her stride —
And had to go to bed a bride.

And was it not a cordial strong,
By which the young Iseult was filled
With passion for a whole life long;
For that the amorous juice instilled?
So he who kept the unwitting tryst
Was sure of love before he kissed.

But where can I get Western gold,
Or posset of constraining fire? —
I who am fated to behold

Close by the elevated the worst of the back-yards lie,
Barren, desolate spaces under an ashen sky,
Bottles and boxes and papers and pieces of glass and tin,
And rotted boards of fencing that shut the scrap-heap in.

Hopeless, dreary ash-piles — and yet there is laughter here;
And hearts bowed down with labor still trace the round of the year,
When the rays of first spring sunshine strike through the dingy pane,
And the broken, rag-stuffed windows are stripped of their rags again.