love poetry

WHEREIN LOVE LINGERS WITH HIM, WATCHING LAURA WALK ABROAD

Here stand we, Love, our glory to regard:
Behold how she surpasses Nature! Stare
The while such sweetness sheds its showers there!
Such drench of dazzling heaven is earth's reward!
Look — purple, pearls and gold in yard on yard
Glitter and richly twist and weave a snare!
How her feet twinkle, her eyes burn the air,
Flashing the dark hills all alive and starred!
The green turf and the thousand-tinted flowers
Under that ancient holm-oak's high pavilion,

WHEREIN LAURA IS GRAVELY ILL

Love, Nature, and that sweet soul's gentleness
Where every pure and lofty virtue dwells,
Are leagued against my peace. Love strains and swells
His malice to destroy me or distress;
The threads which bind the slender nakedness
Of Nature to the earth are weak. Farewells
To the world move that proud heart which rebels
Humbly against the burdens that oppress.
So falters and so fades her spirit's power
Which should inform the flesh like some white flower,

WHEREIN HE EXPATIATES UPON LOVE AND JEALOUSY

Capricious Love now locks the heart in frost,
Now fills the marrow of the heart with fire,
Until we cannot say if hope inspire,
Or fear; if flame has won or ice has lost.
In June I quake and chatter, and am tossed
With flame in mid-December, torn entire
With jealousy, or thrilled with sweet desire,
As if she cloaked some rival to my cost.
But my sick heat consumes me day and night
The more as being all my own; nor thought
Nor poet's tongue can grasp the grim delight

WHEREIN HE URGES UPON A FRIEND THAT MEEKNESS WHICH IS THE ONLY ARMOUR AGAINST LOVE'S GORGON LOOK

When my sweet foe, so often barricaded
In tall contempt, incites me past controlling,
One solace is vouchsafed, one sure consoling,
One strength alone by which my soul is aided:
Wherever her eyes — which would leave my life shaded
In utter darkness — in red anger rolling,
Meet mine, such true humility, such cajoling
Replies, their wrath to meekness is persuaded.
Ah, were it otherwise, less could I dare

WHEREIN LOVE'S SLAVE REMEMBERS

That time and place loom like a promontory
Which marked me manacled and branded so,
Love's hand upon my wrists and the bright blow
Of branding irons that made my pain a glory.
My heart, packed with his flame, like the soft fury
Of those dull moans my ears, my heart well know,
Is so ablaze, its very torments glow:
On these I live, my bitter golden story.
That single sun which burst upon my sight,
Burns with his blinding shafts my soul still taken

HUNGER FOR HER IS PREFERABLE TO HAPPINESS WITH ANOTHER

Ill-starred was I the morning I was born
(If that the constellations have such sway),
Hard was the cradle where I cried that day
And hard the earth by my young footsteps worn;
But harder still, the Lady whose bright scorn
With savage Love conspiring struck dismay
Into my heart... Her eyes, and only they,
Can cure the wound... Her eyes still find me torn.
O cruel Love, thou art, if anything,
More kind: for she, indifferent to the flame

WHEREIN HE TREATS OF LOVE IN EXTREMIS

Remarking in those orbs the orb of light
Where Love serenely rules that agitates
My own, the sick heart quits the soul's dim gates
Once more upon her paradisal flight;
Perceiving, then, how bitter-sweet her plight,
And the world-tangling web which she creates,
She sighs for thwarted love and hesitates,
Recalling the curb's tooth, the fanged spur's bite.
By these two mixed irreconcilables she,
With frozen or with fiery wishes filled,
Stands torn forever in a blind dispute:

WHEREIN EXCESS OF LOVE SILENCES HIS PURPOSE TO SPEAK

Often, when to my fancy her dear face
The colour of compassion took, I strove
With eloquent tears, with courteous speech to move
My stubborn angel in this piteous case:
But let swift anger for a flash displace
Her pity — and my hopes are vain thereof:
My life, death, good and ill by sovereign Love
Are trusted to her mercy and her grace.
Wherefore, whenever my mouth is moved to speak,
I scarce can bear the burden I proclaim,
By passion rendered timorous and weak.

WHEREIN EXCESS OF LOVE LOCKS HIS TONGUE

Filled with a thought whose beauty makes me shun
My kind and wander in the world alone,
I now and then must roll away the stone,
Pursuing her from whom I ought to run;
And see her pass, O sweet, O cruel one!
And my soul flutters and is almost flown,
And falls back, such armed sighs about her moan,
Love's dear antagonist... I am undone...
Be still, my heart! Do I not see beneath
Her proud and pitiless forehead one mild beam
Of mercy, almost thawing my heart's death?

WHEREIN HIS LADY SINGS

If Love her lovely eyes to earth compel,
And in a sigh resolving all her soul,
Permit the music of her voice to roll
Heavenward like a soft angelic bell,
My heart, divorced so sweetly from its shell,
(New thoughts, new wishes roused beyond control)
" O Heaven, " it cries, " grant me this golden dole,
That, listening, Death may ravish me as well! "
But ah, the sense enchanted in that mesh
Melodious, the will inflamed to hear
More and yet more of Heaven so wildly near,