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Love and the Novice

"Here we dwell, in holiest bowers,
Where angels of light o'er our orisans bend;
Where sighs of devotion and breathings of flowers
To heaven in mingled odour ascend.
Do not disturb our calm, oh Love!
So like is thy form to the cherubs above,
It well might deceive such hearts as ours."

Love stood near the Novice and listen'd,
And Love is no novice in taking a hint;
His laughing blue eyes soon with piety glisten'd;
His rosy wing turn'd to heaven's own tint.
"Who would have thought," the urchin cries,

Love and the Gentle Heart

Love and the gentle heart are one thing,
just as the poet says in his verse,
each from the other one as well divorced
as reason from the mind’s reasoning.

Nature craves love, and then creates love king,
and makes the heart a palace where he’ll stay,
perhaps a shorter or a longer day,
breathing quietly, gently slumbering.

Then beauty in a virtuous woman’s face
makes the eyes yearn, and strikes the heart,
so that the eyes’ desire’s reborn again,
and often, rooting there with longing, stays,

Love and Sleep

I have laid sorrow to sleep;
Love sleeps.
She who oft made me weep
Now weeps.

I loved, and have forgot,
And yet
Love tells me she will not
Forget.

She it was bid me go;
Love goes
By what strange ways, ah! no
One knows.

Because I cease to weep,
She weeps.
Here by the sea in sleep,
Love sleeps.

Love and Sacrifice

CAN we not consecrate
To man and God above
This volume of our great
Supernal tide of love?

’Twere wrong its wealth to waste
On merely me and you,
In selfish touch and taste,
As other lovers do.

This love is not as theirs:
It came from the Divine,
Whose glory still it wears,
And print of Whose design.

The world is full of woe,
The time is blurred with dust,
Illusions breed and grow,
And eyes’ and flesh’s lust.

Love and Music

I gazed upon my love while music smote
The soft night air into glad harmony;
Lapt on the ripples of a silver sea,
I heard the bright tones rapturous dance and float.
Hearing and sight were wed; each flattering note
Meant some perfection of my love to me.
Caressed by music, it was bliss to see
Her form, white-robed, the jewel at her throat,
Her glimmering hands, her dusky, perfumed hair,
Her low, clear brow, her deep, proud, dreaming eyes,
Bent kindly upon me, her worshiper;
The dulcet, delicate sounds that shook the air-

Love And Madness

Hark ! from the battlements of yonder tower
The solemn bell has tolled the midnight hour !
Roused from drear visions of distempered sleep,
Poor Broderick wakes—in solitude to weep !

"Cease, Memory; cease (the friendless mourner cried)
To probe the bosom too severely tried !
Oh ! ever cease, my pensive thoughts, to stray
Through tie bright fields of Fortune's better day,
When youthful Hope, the music of the mind,
Tuned all its charms, and Errington was kind !

Yet, can I cease, while glows this trembling frame,

Love and Law

True Love is founded in rocks of Remembrance
In stones of Forbearance and mortar of pain.
The workman lays wearily granite on granite,
And bleeds for his castle, 'mid sunshine and rain.

Love is not velvet, not all of it velvet,
Not all of it banners, not gold-leaf alone.
'Tis stern as the ages and old as Religion.
With Patience its watchword and Law for its throne.

Love and Harmony

Love and harmony combine,
And round our souls entwine
While thy branches mix with mine,
And our roots together join.

Joys upon our branches sit,
Chirping loud and singing sweet;
Like gentle streams beneath our feet
Innocence and virtue meet.

Thou the golden fruit dost bear,
I am clad in flowers fair;
Thy sweet boughs perfume the air,
And the turtle buildeth there.

There she sits and feeds her young,
Sweet I hear her mournful song;
And thy lovely leaves among,
There is love, I hear his tongue.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.