love poetry

The South is a dream of flowers
With a jewel for sky and sea,
Rose-crowns for the dancing hours,
Gold fruits upon every tree;
But cold from the North The wind blows forth
That blows my love to me.
The stars in the South are gold
Like lamps between sky and sea;
The flowers that the forests hold.
Like stars between tree and tree;
But little and white Is the pale moon's light
That lights my love to me.
In the South the orange grove
Makes dusk by the dusky sea,

Among his books he sits all day
To think and read and write;
He does not smell the new-mown hay,
The roses red and white.

I walk among them all alone,
His silly, stupid wife;
The world seems tasteless, dead and done -
An empty thing is life.

At night his window casts a square
Of light upon the lawn;
I sometimes walk and watch it there
Until the chill of dawn.

I have no brain to understand
The books he loves to read;
I only have a heart and hand

Love and Sleep



Lying asleep between the strokes of night
I saw my love lean over my sad bed,
Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head,
Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,
Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,
But perfect-coloured without white or red.
And her lips opened amorously, and said -
I wist not what, saving one word - Delight.

Surprised by joy — impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport--Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind--
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?--That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,

What does it mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease,
No man, woman, or child alive could please
Me now. And yet I almost dare to laugh
Because I sit and frame an epitaph--
"Here lies all that no one loved of him
And that loved no one." Then in a trice that whim
Has wearied. But, though I am like a river
At fall of evening when it seems that never
Has the sun lighted it or warmed it, while
Cross breezes cut the surface to a file,
This heart, some fraction of me, hapily

For every hour that thou wilt spare me now,
I will allow,
Usurious God of Love, twenty to thee,
When with my brown, my grey hairs equal be;
Till then, Love, let my body reign, and let
Me travel, sojourn, snatch, plot, have, forget,
Resume my last year's relict: think that yet
We had never met.

Let me think any rival's letter mine,
And at next nine
Keep midnight's promise; mistake by the way
The maid, and tell the Lady of that delay;
Only let me love none, no, not the sport;

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,