love poem

Quench thy fire, linkman Love,
'Tis not right on one to turn,
Either now thy torch remove
Or make two hearts burn.

" Fly from Love" — 'Tis useless pain;
Love has wings.
" Drive him from you" — All in vain;
Like a wasp he comes again,
And he stings.

O cruel Love, how fierce the fire
That burns my fluttering heart;
Burn not too often, lest desire
A runaway depart.

Court no more those ladies fine
Who in silks and satins shine,
Drenched in scent, of love afraid
If they have no waiting maid.

Choose a girl, whose bosom brown,
Teeth, and hair are all her own,
With your Love alone content,
Though no gift of gold be sent.

She will take you when you will
To her arms and love you still,
And, like Pyrrhus, you shall be
Heedless of Hermioni.

All have heard the grim old legend of the ship that ever sailed
Round the Cape, for ever baffled, labouring on though nought availed;
Ghostly bark that ever struggled through the wild encircling deep,
Phantom sails that flashed on sailors startled from their midnight sleep.

Sudden, through the pitchy darkness loomed the great ship — gaunt it gleamed
Guided by the death-pale pilot, when the lurid lightning beamed:
For one moment there it glittered — then it vanished in the gloom,
Working out through nights eternal its eternity of doom

Give me that rose!
It rests, it blows,
Next to your heart, my sweet.
That flower to which such favour has been shown
Amid Song's deathless flowers shall win a throne
From which to watch the baffled years retreat;
Give me that rose!

Give me that rose:
Our moment goes;

Fair is love whose footstep wanders
'Mid the sunny meads of spring;
Love that smiles and laughs and ponders
While the swallow's on the wing;
Fair and tender,
Full of splendour,
Full of thoughts the roses bring
— — Full of dreams the roses bring.

Sweet is love when fervent summer
Fills the fields with flowers and fruit;
When strong passion, swift-winged comer,
Wakes wild echoes with his lute;

What adds a beauty to the rose?
The thought that, when the night-wind blows,
The petals white or petals pink
At his cold touch may fail and shrink.
This gives its beauty to the flower —
That it but blooms and lives one hour.
The sun gives charm. What gives it more?
The Shadow waiting at the door.

The sweetest hour may swiftly pass:
Brown are these blades, that once were grass.
Blue eyes, gold hair, they are but shows;
Death takes them, as it takes the rose.
Love draws such eager passionate breath

Am IDSUMMER S ONNET

In Winter gifts at Learning's feet we fling:
The sunshine finds us, but through poets' pages;
The stars gleam, but the stars of bygone ages;
Spenser wreathes Winter with the bloom of Spring
The birds are silent, but the poets sing:
In Shelley's verse the undying Summer glows;
At Keats' touch smiles again the frost-nipped rose,
And Virgil rules mid-winter like a king.

" How sweet the world can be! "

I.

The world was sweet to some, love,
'Twas sweet perhaps to thee,
Long years before we met, love,
And just as blue the sea.
But never till we met, love,
Were all things sweet to me;
I never, never, knew, love,
How sweet this world can be!

II.

No doubt the sea was blue, love,
And white the white may-tree —