love poetry

Be grave, woman for love
Still hungering as gardens
For rain though flowerless
What perfume now to rise
From weary expectation.

Be not wild to love,
Poor witch of mysteries
Whose golden age thy body's
Alchemy aburn was
Unto haggard ember.

Beauty's flesh to phantom
Wears unprosperous
And come but devils of
Chill omen to adore
The perforce chaste idolon.

Be grave, woman, to greet
The kiss, the clasp, the shudder which
Rage of thee from crafty
Lust unrolls — and think

Bitterly have I been contested for,
Though never have I counted numbers —
They were too many, less than all.
And kindly have I warded off
Contest and bitterness,
Given each a replica of love,
Beguiled them with fine images.

To their hearts they held them.
Her dear face, its explicitness!
Clearly, of all women, the immediate one
To these immediate men.

But the original woman is mythical,
Lies lonely against no heart.
Her eyes are cold, see love far off,
Read no desertion when love removes,

My words were delicately breathed
As Syren notes: the Cyprian's head
Never shone out more golden-wreathed
Than mine: but now I lie here dead.

A chattering swallow, bright and wild,
Whom one man loved for all her years —
Having loved her even as a child:
I leave him nothing but his tears.

s with loue,
Mout loue vnto the moone in cleerest night,
And say as she doth in the heauens mooue
In earth so wanes & waxeth my delight:
And whisper this but softly in her eares,
Hope oft doth hang the head, and trust shed teares.

And you my thoughts that some mistrust do cary,
If for mistrust my mistrisse do you blame,
Say though you alter, yet you do not varry,
As she doth change, and yet remaine the same:
Distrust doth enter harts, but not infect,

XXVI

The half-moon westers low, my love,
And the wind brings up the rain;
And wide apart lie we, my love,
And seas between the twain.

I know not if it rains, my love,
In the land where you do lie;
And oh, so sound you sleep, my love,
You know no more than I.

VERSE 1 HE :

Dozens of girls would storm up;
I had to lock my door.
Somehow I couldn't warm up
To one before.
What was it that controlled me?
What kept my love life lean?
My intuition told me
You'd come on the scene.
Lady, listen to the rhythm of my heartbeat,
And you'll get just what I mean.

REFRAIN 1

Embrace me,
My sweet embraceable you.
Embrace me,
You irreplaceable you.
Just one look at you — my heart grew tipsy in me;

Your love lurks in my veins like a bandit
Commits arson, shatters lanterns
And skulks in the corners of my veins
Like a wild cat with sharp claws
Alert to hunt moths
To pounce on birds
And I lie awake at night waiting for it to come forth
From my blood.

You came with your conquering army, and caused an upheaval
That changed my life
You sequestered all my possessions
Bound me with chains of gold
And put me under house arrest
Within the limits of your eyes
You locked me in the cell of love

Young men and maids, pray tell your age,
I'll tell you of a sweet one.
She is the darling of my heart,
She is the most complete one.
Me and my love lay down one night.
All on a bed together;
When I woke up, my love was gone,
I was forced to lie without her.

2

Her yellow hair, like strands of gold,
Came rolling down my pillow.
She's the little one I love so well,
She's like the weeping willow.
" You've caused your parents to owe me a grudge
And treat me most unkindly,

You that love England, who have an ear for her music,
The slow movement of clouds in benediction,
Clear arias of light thrilling over her uplands,
Over the chords of summer sustained peacefully;
Ceaseless the leaves' counterpoint in a west wind lively,
Blossom and river rippling loveliest allegro,
And the storms of wood strings brass at year's finale:
Listen. Can you not hear the entrance of a new theme?

You who go out alone, on tandem or on pillion,
Down arterial roads riding in April,

You take a town you cannot keep;
— And, forced in turn to fly,
O'er ruins you have made shall leap
— Your deadliest enemy!
Her love is yours — and be it so —
But can you keep it? No, no, no!

Upon her brow we gazed with awe,
— And loved, and wished to love, in vain
But when the snow begins to thaw
— We shun with scorn the miry plain.
Women with grace may yield: but she
Appeared some Virgin Deity.

Bright was her soul as Dian's crest
— Whitening on Vesta's fane its sheen: