love poetry

WITH THE IMMORTALS

Life and Love went flying, flying,
Out of the world together.
Nothing cared they for pain or dying,
Nothing for stormy weather.
Up they flew
Towards the blue,
Earth and time defying.

Life and Love kept winging, winging,
Higher and ever higher.
Slowly their bright forms vanished, swinging

O LOVELY Griddle where my Cakes of Song
Are baked! O Gulf Stream of my ocean deep!
O Human Thermos Bottle! will you keep
My love as hot as this our whole lives long?
Or will the slow years moderate the strong
Caloric currents? ... gradual years that creep
To frost Love's tootsies where he lies asleep
Shall our fate be that of the common throng?

Well, you at least will live in memory;
And that, Suzanne, is more than I can say
Of my Wife Number Twenty-one, for she
Out of my mind has faded quite away.

Sun of my Heaven! Harvest Moon of love!
Bright Planet! Comet! ... whether earth or sky
I scan, your Pink Bean meets my spirit's eye,
O peer of flowers beneath and stars above!
O Aphrodite's Crimson-Crested Dove,
I love you as New Englanders love pie!
Vesuvius Girl! your fiery head fling high
And give yon leering Zenith's face a shove!

My Twelfth Wife used to go about with twisters
Of kid upon her hair to keep it curley ...
I pulled it all out by the roots ... Poor girlie!

I

P ITTIE mee, Chloris, and the flame
Disdaine, and distance, cannot tame;
And pittie my necessitie,
That makes my Court-shippe, wanting thee,
Nothing but fond Idolatrie.

II

In darke, and Melancholly Groves,
Where prettie birds discourse their Loves,
I dayly worshippe on my knee,
Thy shaddow, all I have of thee,
And sue to that to pittie me.

III

I vow to it the sacred vow,
To thee, and only thee, I owe

Heaven, if it be thy undisputed will
That still
This charming Sex we must adore,
Let us love less, or they love more;
For so the Ills that we endure,
Will find some ease, if not a cure:
Or if their hearts from the first Gangrene be
Infected to that desperate degree
As will no Surgery admit;
Out of thy love to Men at least forbear
To make their faces so subduing fair,
And if thou wilt give Beauty, limit it:
For moderate Beauty, though it bear no price,

This is the dusk-hour when for old love's sake
Ghosts in this garden might arise and move
Down vanished paths, and memories might awake
Out of the death that is so chill to love.
You whose old sins have in the later time
Become a legend perilous and sweet
With tragic whisperings of courtly rhyme, —
Lovely dead chatelaine! — are these your feet
That now across my silence slowly pace
Thrilling the darkness of this garden-close?
Turn! ... No, this is no golden harlot's face, —
This is the bud that is not yet the rose,

  Giul. I HUNGER for her, and am all athirst!
Her scorn affronts me, and doth make me mad.
Mine eyes— these eyes, are wet with heavy drops!
Would'st think me such a fool?
  Ferd. If she disdain thee,
Love, and be quiet, coz.
  Giul. How? What? Be still?
Dost think I am a wild beast tamed by wrongs?
If one, I am the hyæna!—for he sheds tears,
And bites the while he's howling:—but, I'm quiet!
  Ferd. I thought thou lov'dst a rose cheek'd-girl, and merry;
A laugher of sixteen summers; such there are:

  Iol. I laugh at thy base verse.
  Jul. That is not well.
You should have mercy on my desperate pain.
Disdain'st thou? Well,—so be it! I will love
Through all misfortune; even through thy disdain.
I've striven—for years—against this frightful woe,
Though thou didst never know't. The lonely Night
Has seen me wander midst her silent hours,
Darker than they, with my too great despair;
And the poor rhymes, which thou dost scorn so much,
Were dug out of my heart!—ay, forced, at times,

Her voice is soft; not shrill and like the lark's,
But tenderer,—graver,—almost hoarse at times;
As though the earnestness of love prevailed,
And quelled all shriller music.

The blessings of the skies all wait abouTher:
Health, Grace, inimitable Beauty, wreathed
Round every motion:—On her lip, the rose
Has left its sweetness, (for what bee to kiss?)
And from the darkening Heaven of her eyes,
A starry Spirit looks out:—Can it be Love?