See, where the foliage fronts the sky,
How many a meaning we descry
That else had never to the eye
A signal shown!

So we, on life's horizon-line,
To watchers waiting for a sign,
Perchance interpret Love's design,
To us unknown.

Have you ever awakened to find that you're glad to be awake?
Hamburger tastes like steak,
You're in love!
Have you ever experienced the thrill of a fall that feels like spring?
Then you have felt the sting,
You're in love

1. Have you found when she's around that you are so enthused?
You don't make sense, but what's the difference, you're glad to be confused.
It's quite easily explained biologically, you have found a mate,
Might I reiterate,
You're in love.

2. When he's near do you appear to be so ill at ease?

I am,—cry'd Apollo, when Daphne he woo'd,
And panting for breath, the coy virgin pursued,
When his wisdom, in manner most ample, express'd
The long list of the graces his godship possess'd,

I'm—the god of sweet song, and inspirer of lays;
Nor for lays, nor sweet song, the fair fugitive stays;
I'm the god of the harp—stop, my fairest—in vain;
Nor the harp, nor the harper, could fetch her again.

Every plant, every flower, and their virtues I know,
God of light I'm above, and of physic below;
At the dreadful word physic, the nymph fled more fast;

Great love, death-humbled, yields awhile to earth
Its bright one, waiting there the immortal birth:
Rich love, made poor, can trust one hope alone,
Its best, its holiest, to the cold grave-stone:
Eternal Easter of that hope, be born!
The pure make perfect; comfort the forlorn.

When night's dark mantle veil'd the seas,
And nature's self was hush'd to sleep,—
When gently blew the midnight breeze,
Louisa sought the boundless deep.
On the lone beach, in wild despair,
She sat recluse from soft repose,
Her artless sorrows rent the air,
So sad were fair Louisa's woes.

Three years she nurs'd the pleasing thought
Her love, her Henry would return;
But ah! the fatal news were brought,
The sea was made his watery urn.
Sweet maids, who know the power of love,
Ye best can tell what she must feel,

Inside the temple door the sullen light
Fell on the mouthing man, who, stern and drear,
Poured down upon the listening crowd the blight
Of his believing, “Find thy God through fear!”

But out within the green, beneath the blue,
Deep in the heart of nature's festival,
“Love! Love!” the glad birds caroled as they flew,
“O Love! Love! Love!” they sang, “For that is all.”

This is the image of my last content:
My soul shall be a little lonely lake,
So hidden that no shadow of man may break
The folding of its mountain battlement;
Only the beautiful and innocent
Whiteness of sea-born cloud drooping to shake
Cool rain upon the reed-beds, or the wake
Of churn'd cloud in a howling wind's descent.
For there shall be no terror in the night
When stars that I have loved are born in me,
And cloudy darkness I will hold most fair;
But this shall be the end of my delight:
That you, my lovely one, may stoop and see

I wish to sing the hero's praise,
But love alone employs my lays;
My strings I vary'd, chang'd my lyre,
If diff'rent themes might chance inspire.

In martial verse I try'd to sing
The mighty son of Jove;
My lyre resounds from ev'ry string,
The gentle notes of love.

In vain I other themes essay,
In vain I elevate my lay,
Alike my heart, my hand, my lyre,
The softer theme of love require.

Heroes farewell—No more my song
Of warlike deeds shall be;
Henceforth shall now my lays belong
Alone, O Love! to thee

There cannot be two true loves, for the soul
Is smitten by the unity of God
And blooms but once, whether on heaven's sod
Or where the waves of earth's salt craving roll.
But once in an existence shall the whole
Of any heart be sweet between the hands
Of Love,—but once, the vision of fair lands
And far-off Canaanitish meadows stole
Across the enraptured gaze of Moses; he
Was only once permitted to draw near
To God upon the mountain-top and see,
As the blue spaces, distant and austere,
Are sundered by the branches of a tree,

I had a dream and I awoke with it—
Poor little thing that I had not unclasped
After the kiss good-by.

And at the surface how it gasped—
This thing that I had loved in the unlit

Depth of the drowsy sea. …
Ah me!—
This thing with which I drifted toward the sky.

Driftwood upon a wave—
Senseless the motion that it gave.