love poem

How hard the shower falls
Upon the lovely pinks!

Oh, beautiful peonies! — for love of which
Even Kusunoki took off his armour.

When the world fell to pieces, and we stood
Stripped to disaster in the surge and reel
Of crashing nations, still too numbed to feel,
Too stunned to think, we knew one thing held good
Above the strife, and though all else should fail
That made life lovely underneath the sun,
Love, that from the beginning made us one,
Against annihilation should prevail.

And when on the shivering edge of the unknown
Unfathomed darkness each must stand alone,
With eyes that look their last upon the light,

And think'st thou that Woman will smile upon those,
Whom Adversity marks for her own?
Ah, no! — hand in hand with dame Fortune she goes,
On the affluent only her love she bestows,
And thinks that the fount from which happiness flows,
Is splendor and riches alone.

I hop'd that my Emily's love would not fade,
Though fortune and friends were all flown;
Foolish thought! — with my hopes her feign'd passion decay'd,
And deserted and spurn'd by the treacherous maid,
Adversity's storm I am doom'd to pervade,

When I first loved, I loved a wraith,
Yet in my youth I still have faith,
For though dark mills were thundering 'round
I met my love on Roman ground.
Through her I learned to know the peace
Of balance, journeying through Greece,
Then stars above Arabia's dearth
Brought unity to my vexed earth,
And while in England, hand in hand,
I learned to love the love of land,
And everything was in her kiss
My starving city did not miss.

For she was lovely, thin and lithe,
And supple as a willow withe,

I love the world, as does any dancer,
with the tips of my toes. I love the world
more than I love my wife, for it contains
more crannies and crevasses, it tenders
more textures to my twenty digits' touch.
Lush grass underfoot after April rain,
a pile of petals fallen from a rose,
sun-seared sidewalk in summer, sand, fresh-turned
garden dirt, and, yes, her hummocked ankle
rubbed by the ball of my foot as she sleeps.

Do justice! while the slender thread
Above thine own unsheltered head
Restrains the wrath thy breath might free.
" Do justice! " Justice asks of thee!

Love mercy! while no heavenward prayer
Unblessed by blessing enters there,
That mercy may unmeasured be.
" Love mercy! " Mercy asks of thee!

Walk humbly! let the desert dusk
O'er buried pride and broken trust
Bear foot-prints of humility.
" Walk humbly, " God requires of thee!

" Do justice, " by thy sins forgiven,

HERALD

A Queen elect! and Loyalty again
Wakes like a blossom to the summer rain!
Defiled how long! in dust and darkness hid;
As dead as Cheops in his pyramid!
Kings in their time and demagogues to-day,
Baser than swine, have cast that pearl away!
Yet Spring returns, and Loyalty again
Feels the old rapture kindling in each vein;
Biding its time, as Heaven ordains the hours,
It waits to crown the worthiest with flowers.

CROWN

Queen of a proud and immemorial line,

I send our youngest rosebud; and
'Twill wither ere it kiss thy hand.

Also, from our cedar tree,
A plume to outlive chivalry!

So love has knit in one small nest,
The toughest and the tenderest!

Oh! love—love well, but only once! for never shall the dream
Of youthful hope return again on life's dark rolling stream—
No love can match the early one which young affection nurs'd;
Oh, no—the one you loved the best, is she you loved the first.

Once lost—that gladsome vision past—a fairer form may rise,
And eyes whose lustre mocks the light of starry southern skies,
But vainly seek you to enshrine the charmer in your breast,
For still the one you loved the first, is she you loved the best.