To-day mankind our Lord are glorifying
Who came long centuries ago
That by his freely sacrificial dying
He might his holy purpose show.
A dark cloud veiled him in that crucifying,
And in his heart was utter woe,
That heart where love of man was ever trying
To win man's victory here below.
But all in vain — fields still in fight are trodden
And with red blood the furrows still are sodden
In war's abomination.
In my still heart the gloomy thought I cherish:
How many Saviours must be born and perish
Ere comes love's domination?

Young Love, playing on his mother's breast in the early morning, hazarded my life upon the die.

There are three Graces and three Hours, beautiful maidens; and I am pierced with the shafts of desire for three women.
Love drew three arrows against me to wound in me not one heart but three.

I give tears, poor tears, all that is left my love, to you, Heliodora, in Hades under the earth. On your tear-wet grave I lay the memory of our passion, the memory of our affection.
Bitterly, ah bitterly, Meleager mourns his dear one among the dead, her loveliness useless in Acheron.
Ah! where is my beloved olive-shoot? Broken, broken by death! Dust stains the lovely flower.
Earth, Mother of all, I beseech you as a mother, hold gently to your bosom one so bitterly wept.

I cherish Love, the ball-player; he throws to you, Heliodora, the heart which trembles in me.
Let Desire come too as a player; but if you place me away from you I will not endure this breach of the rules of the palaestra!

What wonder if Love, the plague of men, shoots fiery arrows and laughs shrilly with wayward eyes?
Does not his mother love Ares and is she not the wife of Hephaestus and therefore kin to fire and sword?
And does not Thalassa, the mother of his mother, roar savagely under the whip of the winds?
No one knows who his father is. Therefore Love has the fire of Hephaestus and delights in the waves' anger and in the blood-stained shafts of Ares.

Dear, why hath my long love, and faith unfeigned,
At your fair hands no grace at all obtained?

Is 't that my pock-holed face doth beauty lack?
No: your sweet sex, sweet beauty praiseth:
Ours, wit and valour chiefly raiseth.

Is't that my muskless clothes are plain and black?
No: what wise lady loves fine noddies,
With poor-clad minds, and rich-clad bodies?

Is't that no costly gifts mine agents are?
No: my true heart, which I present you,
Should more than pearl or gold content you.

Whosoever longs to try
Both love and jealousy,
My fair inconstant lady let him see,
And he will soon a jealous lover be.

Then he by proof shall know,
As I do to my woe,
How they make my poor heart at once to dwell,
In fire and frost, in heaven and in hell.

To Love

Thou, whose sole Name all Passions doth comprize,
Youngest and Eldest of the Deities,
Born without Parents, whose unbounded Raign
Moves the firm Earth, fixeth the floating Main,
Inverts the Course of Heav'n; and from the Deep
Awakes those Souls that in dark Lethe sleep,
By thy mysterious Chains seeking t'unite
Once more, the long-since torn Hermaphrodite.
He who thy willing Pris'ner long was vow'd
And uncompell'd beneath thy Scepter bow'd,
Returns at last in thy soft Fetters bound,

" Oh why," my darling prayeth me, " must you sing
For ever of ghostly loves, phantasmal passion?
Seeing that you never loved me after that fashion
And the love I gave was not a phantom thing,
But delight of eager lips and strong arms folding
The beauty of yielding arms and of smooth shoulder,
All fluent grace of which you were the moulder:
And I. . . . Oh, I was happy for your holding."
" Ah, do you not know, my dearest, have you not seen
The shadow that broodeth over things that perish:
How age may mock sweet moments that have been