love poetry

If this should fail, why then I scarcely know
What could succeed. Here's brilliancy (and banter),
Byron ad lib. , a chapter of Rousseau; —
If this should fail, then tempora mutantur ;
Style's out of date, and love, as a profession,
Acquires no aid from beauty of expression.

" The men who think as I, Ifear, are few,"
(Cynics would say 'twere well if they were fewer);
" I am not what I seem," — (indeed, 'tis true;

The while my mad brain whirled around
She only looked with eyes elate
Immortal love at me. I found
How deep the glance of love can wound,
How cruel pity is to hate.

I was begirt with hostile spears:
My angel warred in me for you
Whose gentle calmness all too fierce
Made unseen lightnings to pierce
My heart that dripped with ruddy dew.

I know how on the final day
The hosts of darkness meet with death:
The angels with their love shall slay,
Flowing to meet the dark array

O roman maid! why do you try
To win a heart you cannot hold
With honeyed word and witching eye?
For ah! the ancient fire is cold.

Beyond the virgin Alpine snow,
My lady sleeps beside the Rhine —
Upon her grave three roses blow,
Her grave — who was the love of mine.

O, maid of Rome! you cannot move
The heart that sorrow steeped in gloom;
For me alone but one to love,
My lady sleeping in the tomb.

I could praise you once with beautiful words ere you came
And entered my life with love in a wind of flame.
I could lure with a song from afar my bird to its nest,
But with pinions drooping together silence is best.

In the land of beautiful silence the winds are laid,
And life grows quietly one in the cloudy shade.
I will not waken the passion that sleeps in the heart,
For the winds that blew us together may blow us apart.

Fear not the stillness; for doubt and despair shall cease
With the gentle voices guiding us into peace.

A NGUS' S ONG

Are the gods forgotten in Morven of the hinds.
The beauty that slew men the golden eyes that shone
The gods that will be walking on the rocks of the winds
That little men would die for the love of looking on?

Are the gods forgotten in Morven of the stags,
The old gods, the fair gods that were too high for love,
The white feet pressing on the grasses of the crags,

When our glowing dreams were dead,
Ruined our heroic piles,
Something in your dark eyes said:
" Think no more of love or smiles. "

Something in me still would say,
" Though our dreamland palace goes,
I have seen how in decay
Still the wild rose clings and blows. "

But your dark eyes willed it thus:
" Build our lofty dream again:
Let our palace rise o'er us:
Love can never be till then. "

Many poems have I written unto thee, good and bad,
And many more have I not uttered,
For the words came not. Ay, those feeble little words
That leap so easily from the lips of the speaker
And fall dead upon the ground, they came not:
For they were fearful of the burden of my thought,
And my passion shrivelled them up as leaves in a hot fire.
My thoughts were like lightning playing upon the hills,
They hovered about thy beauty as lightning upon the sea;
Pale, cold is thy beauty, aloof from the warm arms of the earth,

When first a gentle kiss
Upon Nise I pressed,
Paradise-grain and cassia
Her lovely breath confessed.
And on her smiling lips
Such luscious sweets I found
As never knew the hills
Or bees of Hybla's ground.
To purify its balm
With love's essential dews,
A thousand and a thousand times
Each day her lips I choose;
Until the sum and total
Of all our score amount
To kisses more than Venus
Did from Adonis count.

Alexis calls me cruel:
The rifted crags that hold
The gathered ice of winter,
He says, are not more cold.

When even the very blossoms
Around the fountain's brim,
And forest-walks, can witness
The love I bear to him.

I would that I could utter
My feelings without shame,
And tell him how I love him,
Nor wrong my virgin fame.

Alas! to seize the moment
When heart inclines to heart,
And press a suit with passion,
Is not a woman's part.

If man come not to gather

When love is over, are we most alone.
When hearths are black, there is the cold of stone.
I rise from my bed and walk the dismal night,
Weeping, I seek alone my ultimate right.

The warmth and cheer of Love is but a lure,
By which the blood is cheated to endure.
To each man is a path, by other feet untrod,
Which leads him, lonely, to the hill of God.

On God's cold hill, there is a holy height,
Where splendid fires descend to man at night:
On the cold traveller falls the livening breath,