love poetry

WHEREIN HE INVOKES THE AID OF LOVE TO SING HER WORTHILY

Ah Love, assist my faint and foolish brain!
Pillar the style, sustain the lyric portal!
Help me to sing of her who is immortal,
A citizen of the celestial reign!
Permit, Lord, that my verses may attain
The reach of her proud praise (presumptuous mortal!)
Whose passing our poor world must now deplore till
The Golden Trumpet give her back again.
Love answers: " In myself and Heaven the best,
By converse pure and precept sage and holy,

WHEREIN HE CRAVES THE SWIFT RECOMPENSE OF HER INTERCESSION AS REWARD FOR HIS TRUE AND LONG LOVE

Lady, that blissfully with God may glitter
By virtue of surpassing charms and graces,
Thou art enthroned now in the golden places,
With more than pearls adorned, with purple fitter
A princes of the Lord: Ah, loveliest sitter
On the celestial dais, through Him that traces
The secret breast, regard my heart whose basis
Of love and faith my songs prove, my tears bitter.
Know, also, at the last how my heart only

WHEREIN THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD CAME AND WENT WITH LAURA

Amid a lovely thousand one I saw,
Whom seeing — and these shapes no fancy bred —
Instantly I was seized by amorous dread,
Then flamed with ardour, then was hushed with awe.
No fleck was in her, never mortal flaw,
No earthly happiness her hunger fed;
My soul, constrained to follow where she led,
Flinched at the blue pavilions of His law.
Alas, her sweep outsoared all wings, all cries,
And in a little space she sped from sight:

WHEREIN HE HOPES SHE MAY REWARD THE OPEN PURITY AND PERMANENCE OF HIS LOVE

If honest love can merit recompense,
If pity still can do what she has done,
Mercy is mine, for clearer than the sun
My faith wins earth's and Laura's audience.
She feared me on a time; now confidence,
Though fearful to believe, believes me none
The less; where word or look before had won,
Now speaks my whole soul, stripped of all pretence.
And so I hope the high stars may resound
With her sighs doubling mine, on me the while

THE SENSE FAINTS PICTURING HER

The high new wonder that enriched our days,
Dawned on our world, but would not dally there,
Heaven revealed, only to make men stare,
Then snatched back in its own bright world to blaze:
That to posterity I paint and praise
Her beauty is Love's will, Love's early snare;
Though now wit, time, pen, ink are weak to bear
The lovely burden and the long delays.
My rhymes pulse slowly for all Love's impelling;
I feel it, and whoever here and now,

WHEREIN HE ENTREATS HER TO GLANCE DOWN ON HIM AND HIS GRIEF

O lovely spirit, flown from a lovelier snare
Than any Nature knitted in her loom,
Look down from thy new brightness, see the gloom
That eats my heart out, pity my despair!
The false fog that deluded once I tear
Asunder from my soul; no dreads consume
Thee now: O turn thine eyes, regard my doom
And drink the fire with which I drench the air!
Gaze on this rock from which the Sorga flows —
Dost thou not see me bowed with my black load,

WHEREIN HE REVEALS HIS ANGUISH TO ALL SUCH AS HAD WITNESSED HIS PREVIOUS DELIGHT

Love, that in lovelier days would wander here,
Walking and whispering by these mutual shores,
While the glad waters in green corridors
Listened to music she made doubly dear;
Ye flowers, leaves, grass, glades, grottoes, tranquil air,
Soft valleys, soaring hills and golden floors,
Ye trackless forests, rock-piled auditors
That often shared Love's laughter or Love's tear;
Ye coal-eyed nymphs that haunt this leafy place;

WHEREIN HE REVEALS HIS ANGUISH TO ALL SUCH AS HAD WITNESSED HIS PREVIOUS DELIGHT

Love, that in lovelier days would wander here,
Walking and whispering by these mutual shores,
While the glad waters in green corridors
Listened to music she made doubly dear;
Ye flowers, leaves, grass, glades, grottoes, tranquil air,
Soft valleys, soaring hills and golden floors,
Ye trackless forests, rock-piled auditors
That often shared Love's laughter or Love's tear;
Ye coal-eyed nymphs that haunt this leafy place;

WHEREIN THE DAWN DOUBLES HIS ANGUISH

When I behold the rose breathe on Aurora
Its lovely flush and see her bright locks dripping
A golden dew, this heart that watched night slipping
Exclaims, " Ah happy Tithonus, there lies Laura!
Thou canst each twilight sleep in the radiant aura
Of Love's dear head; but not for me the sipping
Of such delights, till the shears do their clipping
And Love is drenched by flower-handed Flora.
Between thee and thy Thetis looms no curtain:
That dusk will bring her back to thee is certain

IN SELF-EXILE AT VAUCLUSE

Nowhere before in one miraculous hour
Have I so clearly seen my soul's desire;
Nowhere before felt freedom lift me higher
In passionate music and in lyric power;
Never proved valley's dark sequestered bower
So perfect for the sigh, the singing fire:
Not even Cyprus could Love so inspire,
Not even Gnidos build Love such a tower.
Everything breathes and spins a single spell
Upon me, whispering love: the sky, the time,
The winds, the birds, water and boughs all rhyme