love poems for her

1 It is not, Celia, in our power
2 To say how long our love will last;
3 It may be we within this hour
4 May lose those joys we now do taste:
5 The blessed, that immortal be,
6 From change in love are only free.

7 Then, since we mortal lovers are,
8 Ask not how long our love will last;
9 But while it does, let us take care
10 Each minute be with pleasure past.
11 Were it not madness to deny
12 To live, because w'are sure to die?

1 If she be not as kind as fair,
2 But peevish and unhandy,
3 Leave her, she's only worth the care
4 Of some spruce Jack-a-dandy.
5 I would not have thee such an ass,
6 Hadst thou ne'er so much leisure,
7 To sigh and whine for such a lass
8 Whose pride's above her pleasure.

1 Rose-cheek'd Laura, come,
2 Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty's
3 Silent music, either other
4 Sweetly gracing.

5 Lovely forms do flow
6 From concent divinely framed;
7 Heav'n is music, and thy beauty's
8 Birth is heavenly.

9 These dull notes we sing
10 Discords need for helps to grace them;
11 Only beauty purely loving
12 Knows no discord,

13 But still moves delight,

1 Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet;
2 Haste you, sad notes, fall at her flying feet.
3 There, wrapp'd in cloud of sorrow, pity move,
4 And tell the ravisher of my soul I perish for her love:
5 But if she scorns my never-ceasing pain,
6 Then burst with sighing in her sight and ne'er return again.

7 All that I sung still to her praise did tend,
8 Still she was first; still she my songs did end;
9 Yet she my love and music both doth fly,

1 If love now reigned as it hath been
2 And were rewarded as it hath sin,

3 Noble men then would sure ensearch
4 All ways whereby they might it reach,

5 But envy reigneth with such disdain
6 And causeth lovers outwardly to refrain,

7 Which puts them to more and more
8 Inwardly most grievous and sore.

9 The fault in whom I cannot set,
10 But let them tell which love doth get--

11 To lovers I put now sure this case:

1 Come live with me and be my love,
2 And we will all the pleasures prove,
3 That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
4 Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

5 And we will sit upon the rocks,
6 Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
7 By shallow rivers, to whose falls
8 Melodious birds sing madrigals.

9 And I will make thee beds of roses,
10 And a thousand fragrant posies,
11 A cap of flowers and a kirtle
12 Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle:

1 If all the world and love were young,
2 And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
3 These pretty pleasures might me move
4 To live with thee and be thy love.

5 Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
6 When rivers rage and rocks grow cold,
7 And Philomel becometh dumb;
8 The rest complains of cares to come.

9 The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
10 To wayward winter reckoning yields;
11 A honey tongue, a heart of gall,

1 I loathe that I did love,
2 In youth that I thought sweet;
3 As time requires for my behove,
4 Me thinks they are not meet.
5 My lusts they do me leave,
6 My fancies all be fled,
7 And tract of time begins to weave
8 Gray hairs upon my head.
9 For age, with stealing steps,
10 Hath clawed me with his crutch,
11 And lusty life away she leaps
12 As there had been none such.
13 My muse doth not delight
14 Me as she did before,

1 She lay, face downward, on her beaded arm,
2 In this her new, sweet dream of human bliss,
3 Her heart within her fearful, fluttering, warm,
4 Her lips yet pained with love's first timorous kiss.
5 She did not note the darkening afternoon,
6 She did not mark the lowering of the sky
7 O'er that great city. Earth had given its boon
8 Unto her lips, love touched her and passed by.

9 In one dread moment all the sky grew dark,

1 Canst thou love me, lady?
2 I've not learn'd to woo:
3 Thou art on the shady
4 Side of sixty too.
5 Still I love thee dearly!
6 Thou hast lands and pelf:
7 But I love thee merely
8 Merely for thyself.

9 Wilt thou love me, fairest?
10 Though thou art not fair;
11 And I think thou wearest
12 Someone-else's hair.
13 Thou could'st love, though, dearly:
14 And, as I am told,
15 Thou art very nearly