love poetry

What love is; how I love; how builders' clay
By love is lit into a golden spending;
How love calls beautiful ghosts back to the day;
How life because of love shall have no ending —
These with the dawn I have begun to sing,
These with the million-budded noon that's rising
Shall be a theme, with love's consent, to bring
My song to some imperishable devising.
And may the petals of this garland fall
On every quarrel, and in fragrance bless
Old friendship; and a little comfort all
The weary loves that walk the wilderness,

I

A T any moment love unheralded
Comes, and is king. Then as, with a fall
Of frost, the buds upon the hawthorn spread
Are withered in untimely burial,
So love, occasion gone, his crown puts by,
And as a beggar walks unfriended ways,
With but remembered beauty to defy
The frozen sorrows of unsceptred days.
Or in that later travelling he comes
Upon a bleak oblivion, and tells
Himself, again, again, forgotten tombs
Are all now that love was, and blindly spells
His royal state of old a glory cursed,

I WOULD no sweeter treasure know
From your dear love than I can give,
And in such peace as you bestow
I pray for you to live.

Star to rejoicing star shall move
And flower on happy flower shall shine,
But all the sorrows of our love, —
Let these be wholly mine.

Yet that is treason. For I bear
No prouder heart than is your own,
And you would scorn the love would share
Delight and grieve alone.

Lovers, who in complaints your selves consume,
And to be happy once, perhaps presume,
Your love & hopes, alike are vain,
Nor will they ever cure your pain.
They that in Love would Joy attain,
Their passion to their power must frame.
Let them enjoy what they can gain,
And never higher aym.

Complaints & Sorrows, from my breast depart,
You think to soften an ungentle heart,
When it not onely wards such blows,

C HRIST , for whose only Love I keep me clean
Among the palaces of Babylon,
I would not Thou should'st reckon me with them
Who miserly would count each golden stone
That flags the street of Thy Jerusalem —
Who, having touched and tasted, heard and seen,

Half-drunken yet from earthly revelries,
Would wipe with flower-wreathed hair Thy bleeding Feet,
Jostling about Thee but to stay the heat
Of pale parched lips in Thy cool chalices.

" Our cups are emptiness — how long? how long

On river banks my love was born,
And cradled 'neath a budding thorn,
Whose flowers never more shall kiss
Lips half so sweet and red as his.
Beneath him lily-islands spread
With broad cool leaves a floating bed:
Around, to meet his opening eyes,
The ripples danced in glad surprise.
I found him there when spring was new,
When winds were soft and skies were blue;
I marvelled not, although he drew
My whole soul to him, for I knew
That he was born to be my king,
And I was only born to sing

I

Pansies for dreams, —
Dead dreams:
Dead, though with dew ashine;
Dead, though they were divine;
Dead, in this hand of mine;
Dreams of the Dawn, —
Soon gone.

II

Roses for love, —
Lost love:
Lost, in an hour of pain;
Lost, mid the heart's blood rain;
Lost, though we smile again;
Love of the Noon, —
O'er soon

I.

Soft , oh! how softly sleeping
Shadow'd by beauty she lies,
Dreams, as of rapture, creeping,
Smile by smile, over her eyes;
Lips, oh! how sweetly parting,
As if the delight between,
With its own warm pulses starting,
Strove to go forth and be seen.

II.

'Tis Love, born newly of fancy,
Brushing her heart with his plume,
That wakes, with his necromancy,

Love on the earth alit,
Come to be Lord of it;
Looked round and laughed with glee,
Noble my empery!
Straight ere that laugh was done
Sprang forth the royal sun,
Pouring out golden shine
Over the realm divine.

Came then a lovely may,
Dazzling the new-born day,
Wreathing her golden hair
With the red roses there,
Laughing with sunny eyes
Up to the sunny skies,
Moving so light and free
To her own minstrelsy.

Love with swift rapture cried,
Dear Life, thou art my bride!

He may have been a worthy wight
Who mocked the sun with candle-light,

As seeking in that foolish way,
An honest man in open day;

But who has heard of one of these
Revealed unto Diogenes?

I think his lanthorn lacked alone
Some honest motions of his own!

The man with little love shall find
But little loving in mankind!

And one of feeble honor can
By no means find an honest man!

To win the Indies' wealth, lay out
The Indies' worth, or thereabout.