All Love asks is a heart to stay in;
A brave, true heart to be glad and gay in;
A garden of tender thoughts to play in;
A faith unswerving through cold or heat
Till the heart where Love lodges forgets to beat.

Alas, what shall I do for love?
For love, alasse, what shall I do?
Syth now so kynd
I do you fynde
To kepe yow me unto?
Alasse!

Like this alabaster box whose art
Is frail as a cassia-flower, is my heart,
Carven with delicate dreams and wrought
With many a subtle and exquisite thought.


Therein I treasure the spice and scent
Of rich and passionate memories blent
Like odours of cinnamon, sandal and clove,
Of song and sorrow and life and love.

Call it to mind, O my love.
Dear were your eyes as the day,
Bright as the day and the sky;
Like the stream of gold and the sky above,
Dear were your eyes in the grey.
We have lived, my love, O, we have lived, my love!
Now along the silent river, azure
Through the sky's inverted image,
Softly swam the boat that bore our love,
Swiftly ran the shallow of our love
Through the heaven's inverted image,
In the reedy mazes round the river.
See along the silent river,
II
See of old the lover's shallop steer.

Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,
Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be;
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is,
Love must not be, but take a body too;
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid love ask, and now
That it assume thy body I allow,
And fix itself to thy lip, eye, and brow.

Though many years have passed, and loves, I swear
I can still smell the soaps this one would use.
I can still see the mole on her left thigh,
black eden lace against her northern skin.

And I recall the thong straps she would wear,
the camisoles and fishnets she would choose,
brown archipelago in her blue eye,
and how she opened doors and let me in.

My lover in her room—a universe
of small particulars: the way she moaned,
the way she hinted which of us was worse,

my lust-shorn shorts beside the book she'd loaned,

AH, how sweet it is to love!
Ah, how gay is young Desire!
And what pleasing pains we prove
When we first approach Love's fire!
Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are.

Sighs which are from lovers blown
Do but gently heave the heart:
Ev'n the tears they shed alone
Cure, like trickling balm, their smart:
Lovers, when they lose their breath,
Bleed away in easy death.

Love and Time with reverence use,
Treat them like a parting friend;
Nor the golden gifts refuse

AH, how sweet it is to love!
   Ah, how gay is young Desire!
And what pleasing pains we prove
   When we first approach Love's fire!
Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are.

Sighs which are from lovers blown
   Do but gently heave the heart:
Ev'n the tears they shed alone
   Cure, like trickling balm, their smart:
Lovers, when they lose their breath,
Bleed away in easy death.

Love and Time with reverence use,

You ask, my love, about my tears
But don't you recognize the fears
That agonize my heart?
Were not your infidelity
Torturing me so cruelly
My sorrows would depart

How can your lovers joyful be
If practicing idolatry
Is just like loving you?
If this your real nature is
What wounded heart can find release?
What medicine will do?

I sense, that you have turned aside
I suffer from my rivals' pride
I'm killed in either way,
If one makes love to Plato's tune
To me he'll always be Manjun
Tomorrow as today

Full oft you're plaining that in age
Our faculties and feelings die.
And it may be that thinkers sage
Do think like you. Yet plain not I.
When sick we've grown of pride and show,
Why should our striving strength live on?
Or why should love forbear to go,
When all we cared to love—are gone?