romantic poems

I.
Introth, I do my self perswade,
That the wilde boy is grown a man,
And all his childishnesse off laid,
E're since LUCASTA did his fires fan;
H' has left his apish jigs,
And whipping hearts like gigs:
For t' other day I heard him swear,
That beauty should be crown'd in honours chair.

II.
With what a true and heavenly state
He doth his glorious darts dispence,
Now cleans'd from falsehood, blood and hate,
And newly tipt with innocence!

Cord. Distressed pilgrim, whose dark clouded eyes
Speak thee a martyr to love's cruelties,
Whither away?
Amor. What pitying voice I hear,
Calls back my flying steps?
Cord. Pr'ythee, draw near.
Amor. I shall but say, kind swain, what doth become
Of a lost heart, ere to Elysium
It wounded walks?
Cord. First, it does freely flye
Into the pleasures of a lover's eye;

I.
Now fie upon that everlasting life! I dye!
She hates! Ah me! It makes me mad;
As if love fir'd his torch at a moist eye,
Or with his joyes e're crown'd the sad.
Oh, let me live and shout, when I fall on;
Let me ev'n triumph in the first attempt!
Loves duellist from conquest 's not exempt,
When his fair murdresse shall not gain one groan,
And he expire ev'n in ovation.

II.
Let me make my approach, when I lye downe
With counter-wrought and travers eyes;

"Come, pretty birds, present your lays,
And learn to chaunt a goddess praise;
Ye wood-nymphs, let your voices be
Employ'd to serve her deity:
And warble forth, ye virgins nine,
Some music to my Valentine.

"Her bosom is love's paradise,
There is no heav'n but in her eyes;
She's chaster than the turtle-dove,
And fairer than the queen of love:
Yet all perfections do combine
To beautifie my Valentine.

"She's Nature's choicest cabinet,

Vnhappy youth, betrayd by Fate
To such a love hath sainted hate,
And damned those celestiall bands
Are onely knit with equal hands;
The love of great ones is a love,
Gods are incapable to prove:
For where there is a joy uneven,
There never, never can be Heav'n:
'Tis such a love as is not sent
To fiends as yet for punishment;
IXION willingly doth feele
The gyre of his eternal wheele,
Nor would he now exchange his paine
For cloudes and goddesses againe.

I.
Long in thy shackels, liberty
I ask not from these walls, but thee;
Left for awhile anothers bride,
To fancy all the world beside.

II.
Yet e're I doe begin to love,
See, how I all my objects prove;
Then my free soule to that confine,
'Twere possible I might call mine.

III.
First I would be in love with PEACE,
And her rich swelling breasts increase;
But how, alas! how may that be,
Despising earth, she will love me?

If spicy-fringed pinks that blush and pale
With passions of perfume, -- if violets blue
That hint of heaven with odor more than hue, --
If perfect roses, each a holy Grail
Wherefrom the blood of beauty doth exhale
Grave raptures round, -- if leaves of green as new
As those fresh chaplets wove in dawn and dew
By Emily when down the Athenian vale
She paced, to do observance to the May,
Nor dreamed of Arcite nor of Palamon, --
If fruits that riped in some more riotous play

I asked my heart to say
Some word whose worth my love's devoir might pay
Upon my Lady's natal day.

Then said my heart to me:
`Learn from the rhyme that now shall come to thee
What fits thy Love most lovingly.'

This gift that learning shows;
For, as a rhyme unto its rhyme-twin goes,
I send a rose unto a Rose.

In the heart of the Hills of Life, I know
Two springs that with unbroken flow
Forever pour their lucent streams
Into my soul's far Lake of Dreams.

Not larger than two eyes, they lie
Beneath the many-changing sky
And mirror all of life and time,
-- Serene and dainty pantomime.

Shot through with lights of stars and dawns,
And shadowed sweet by ferns and fawns,
-- Thus heaven and earth together vie
Their shining depths to sanctify.

Always when the large Form of Love

I.

The storm that snapped our fate's one ship in twain
Hath blown my half o' the wreck from thine apart.
O Love! O Love! across the gray-waved main
To thee-ward strain my eyes, my arms, my heart.
I ask my God if e'en in His sweet place,
Where, by one waving of a wistful wing,
My soul could straightway tremble face to face
With thee, with thee, across the stellar ring --
Yea, where thine absence I could ne'er bewail
Longer than lasts that little blank of bliss