love poetry

We rule the blue-green waves that round our shores
For ever surge. In vain the tempest roars;
The sea yields, and the land:
But death and love evade our conquering will.
We strive to master them. They cheat us still
With unique sleight of hand.

The humblest cottage-home, whose garden gleams
With scented English blossoms, has its dreams
Of love and death, alas!
Beside our hamlets ever stands the church,
And white tombs near it — under elm or birch,
Nestling in dark-green grass.

" How lovely is that curve of dazzling breast!
Now am I blest
Beyond all words, in that thou art so fair! " She . —
" Thou art the stronger. Teach me, love, to be
Ever to thee
True helper. In life's struggle let me share! " He . —

" The starlit heaven is less sweet than thine eyes:
Within them lies
An unknown passionate world beyond my dream. " She . —
" Yet must we, prisoners in this world of woe,
Climb from below

There is a point at which the burning soul
Collects, as into one tremendous flame,
Each perilous desire and every aim,
Determining to sacrifice the whole.
Then all God's voices and his thunders roll
Like gathering tides across the shaken sand
Whereon this spirit's trembling feet do stand,
And the wide earth is as a parchment scroll
Engraved with fiery letters: " Thou shalt die
And be forgotten, even as a star
That flames, and it has vanished from the sky, —
Even as a comet gleaming from afar,

I.

The sweetest love is over
This world has ever seen.
No more am I your lover!
No more are you my queen!
The stars are in the sky, love,
They glitter as of old:
Starless are you and I, love, —
Our heavens are dark and cold.

Oh, if you had been true, love,
We could have conquered pain!
My whole soul trusted you, love
— It will not trust again.

God having given Love, it cannot be
That he should take it. I am calm to wait
Till as a rosebud at his palace-gate
That unforgotten face of her I see, —
For this and nothing else shall come to me,
In this life or the next, or soon or late: —
I fall into the outspread arms of fate,
And — find they are the pleasant arms of thee!

Does God in heaven seek love and sigh for praise?
Neither is his from me, being left forlorn.
For so the double heart of God is torn
Asunder; and for any song I raise,

DAWN TO SUNSET

Beneath the high majestic morning gleaming
Once field and mount and moor and forest lay:
O'er joyous vale and hill I wandered, dreaming
That all life's hours were as the dawn of day.

The sun's touch woke the golden daffodilly;
His clear beam drew the snowdrop from repose:
Then first love said, " My heart is like the lily! "
And passion said, " My soul is as the rose! "

But France, fair France, that held her stedfast way
Mocked, cursed or preached at, — France that ever knew
That deep in Beauty's form lay hid the true
Secret that gives its golden life to day
And sends the blue waves leaping through the bay
And on the rose bestows its passionate hue, —
Shall not the Power whose eyes are dawns renew
Her force, and grant her Art's domains to sway?

No voice replies. This only is grandly sure, —
Where God and Love and Beauty and Woman are
There also shines the sun, there flower and star

WITHOUT AND WITHIN

Iron outside. — To face the world and fate
Strength as of finely-woven subtle steel.
Strength which can conquer time and never kneel
Till the last foe has passed outside the gate.
Strength as of iron to encounter hate
And snap the arrows of the world piecemeal.
A strong brave heart that in no wise doth feel
The shock of spears that strike the blue breast-plate.

Is not love sweeter in that we have dared
To look upon the very face of death?
That we have trembled at his icy breath
Yet have not faltered, but have bravely shared
With him the chaplets laughing love prepared
When life was like one ever-fragrant wreath? —
Is love not sweeter in that underneath
Lurks the grim eyeless terror, serpent-haired?

Is love not sweeter when two souls have said,

That pains me so! To think the sunlight knew,
The blossoms knew (or how could they have bloomed!)
The sunsets knew thee, wild and crimson-plumed,
Spreading their plumage over ceaseless blue.
I was the one heart in the world untrue!
That saddens me; for now so many entombed
Sweet thoughts of thine may never be resumed.
Can Nature's hand repeat one sunset's hue?

I cannot penetrate with fiery speed
The far star-spaces, — search the silent night
For thoughts of thine that made dark spaces bright