Lord, if I love Thee and Thou lovest me,
Why need I any more these toilsome days;
Why should I not run singing up Thy ways
Straight into heaven, to rest myself with Thee?
What need remains of death-pang yet to be,
If all my soul is quickened in Thy praise;
If all my heart loves Thee, what need the amaze,
Struggle and dimness of an agony? —
Bride whom I love, if thou too lovest Me,
Thou needs must choose My Likeness for thy dower:
So wilt thou toil in patience, and abide
Hungering and thirsting for that blessed hour

Who loves his friend with his heart of hearts
Bends not his head though the sky rain darts,
O, our lifetime wastes to no lofty end
Till the hero is matched with an equal friend.
Poison from the hand of my love were food,
The sweet & the bane do the heart good.
Knowst thou shy Saadi sits ever alone?
Because he cannot part from the darling one.
Saadi

Not for me marring or making,
Not for me giving or taking;
I love my Love and he loves not me,
I love my Love and my heart is breaking.

Sweet is Spring in its lovely showing,
Sweet the violet veiled in blowing,
Sweet it is to love and be loved;
Ah, sweet knowledge beyond my knowing!

Who sighs for love sighs but for pleasure,
Who wastes for love hoards up a treasure;
Sweet to be loved and take no count,
Sweet it is to love without measure.

Sweet my Love whom I loved to try for,
Sweet my Love whom I love and sigh for,

Wondering long, how I could harmless see
Men gazing on those beams that fired me,
At last I found it was the crystal, Love,
Before my heart that did the heat improve:
Which, by contracting of those scatter'd rays
Into itself, did so produce my blaze.
Now, lighted by my love, I see the same
Beams dazzle those, that me are wont t' inflame;
And now I bless my love, when I do think
By how much I had rather burn than wink.
But how much happier were it thus to burn,
If I had liberty to choose my urn!
But since those beams do promise only fire,

If you refuse me once and think again,
I will complain.
You are deceiv'd, love is no work of art;
It must be got and born,
Not made and worn,
By every one that hath a heart.
Or do you think they more than once can die,
Whom you deny;
Who tell you of a thousand deaths a day,
Like the old poets feign
And tell the pain
They met, but in the common way?

Or do you think 't too soon to yield,
And quit the field?
Nor is that right; they yield that first entreat:
Once one may crave for love,
But more would prove

When Love, puffed up with rage of high disdain,
Resolved to make me pattern of his might,
Like foe, whose wits inclined to deadly spite,
Would often kill, to breed more feeling pain;
He would not, armed with beauty, only reign
On those affects which eas'ly yield to sight,
But virtue sets so high, that reason's light,
For all his strife can only bondage gain:
So that I live to pay a mortal fee,
Dead-palsy sick of all my chiefest parts;
Like those whom dreams make ugly monsters see,
And can cry " Help!" with naught but groans and starts.

I humm'd an air of sweet Mozart,
A tender sigh of love,
With just enough of jealous heart
To make it like the dove.
It haunted me thro' a field of oats
And o'er a thymy down
To where the sea with rocking boats
Wore sunset like a crown

Love they alone the joyful heart
The night wind & the leaf? —
That when we are sick with an evil smart
They whisper nought but grief.

I thought in my young days to find
Relief for breast & brow:
In the mere breathing of the wind,
And swaying of the bough.

But now, with no remorseful calm,
I look where dead men rest,
Half jealous of that pallid balm
Which sleeps on brow & breast.

Could we know how kin we are
With every little drooping flower
With every little distant star
And every viewless power.

Could we but be content to live
As flower below, or star above
And in our daily counsels give
Less logic and more love

The desert vulture
jealousy
The sea gull
love secure
He rests not thro' the flaming day;
Ev'n in the burning Heaven above
He soars but in the search of prey;
And that is jealous love.

The sea-gull dips his salt white wings