love poem

1

Sweeter than the blossomed beans
Where the bind weed, bell-flower leans
Than beauty in her teens
Is love
Than roses on the briar
I' the summer o' the year
By the waters running clear
Sweeter is love
She's the first flower all the year
The maid I love

2

I love the blue violet that creeps on the mossy bank
And wood bell so purple wi green leaves so glossy rank
Where wild rabbits caper wi' many a tossy prank
And show their white shirts to the light
I love the mossy bank by the green hazle bush
I love the early song o' the brown missle thrush
And dairy decked mole hill i' beds o the tassle rush
I' the middle o' summers delight.

But better than mossy banks twenty times over
Or wind waving rush beds the form of my lover
Sweet Susan as fair as the clumps o' white clover

Come softly my darling My love quickly come
To its hole fly's the starling The bee tutles home
The moon it shines sweetly O'er firwood and lea
O come out love and meet me My sweetheart to be.

My dear Mary Williams how lone absence seems
Does nature ill will us The woods and the streams
Come out love unchiding Our walk love shall be
Down the lonely wood riding neath the rusty fir tree.

The night lamps of heaven The moons gentle light
To thee and me love To walk out to night

1

I do not love thee
So I'll not deceive thee
I do not love thee
Yet I'm lothe to leave thee

2

I do not love thee
Yet joys very essence
Comes with thy footstep
Is complete in thy presence

3

I do not love thee
Yet when gone I sigh
And think about thee
'Till the stars all die

4

I do not love thee
Yet thy black bright eyes
Bring to my hearts soul
Heaven and paradise

5

I do not love thee
Yet thy handsome ways

Is love a flower to bud then bloom
And give to sunshine its perfume
Then die and be as nothing where
The earth of the succeeding year
And is it nothing else but earth
Sure it is of holier birth
Not born to fade and pass away
But like the heavens eternal ray
Bright, beaming beautiful and high
As morning in a summer sky
As sunshine in sweet summer showers
As colours in the sweetest flowers
But love's not without shadows born
Nor roses bloom without a thorn
And love carressing or derided

The Crow

How peaceable it seems for lonely men
To see a crow fly in the thin blue sky
Over the woods and fealds, o'er level fen
It speaks of villages, or cottage nigh
Behind the neighbouring woods — when march winds high
Tear off the branches of the hugh old oak
I love to see these chimney sweeps sail by
And hear them o'er the knarled forest croak
Then sosh askew from the hid woodmans stroke
That in the woods their daily labours ply
I love the sooty crow nor would provoke
Its march day exercises of croaking joy

1

I love the thistle with its ruddy flowers
It cheers me on the waste in lonely hours
It cheers me in lone sunshine out of doors
When seeking solitude on rushy moores
It cheers me resting on the way-side stones
Where tears of morning glitter on the thorns
I love the thistle 'tis an ill used flower
And bees are singing round for many an hour.

2

I love the thistle and its prickles too
Cobwebs are round it with a veil of dew
I love the thistle where it bravely stands

1

Bless't is the man with mind erect —
That seeks no rise that fears no fall
For freedoms love shall him protect
And having nothing leaves him all
There liberty is ever free
Knowing that such a love must be.

2

'Tis Adam's love for Adam's kin
That Eden of earths Liberty
That triumphs over death and sin
And will in natures love be free
'Twas so when this our world begun
Love — bright and lasting as the sun.

3

Free bonds that knit the son and sire

When spring comes unwelcome to the lovers eye[s]
And the voice o' the singing bird grates on the ear
When the green o' the white thorn idle fancies despise
And beauty o' womanhood fails to be dear
Then my thought shall be blighted and love pass away
And bitterness nip my fond heart to its core
And sweet sensibility drop and decay
O' then dearest Ellen I'll love thee no more
My beautiful Ellen ... no
I'll love thee no more.

When the wild flowers o' summer unnoticed forgotten
Shall flourish neglected and blossom unseen

1

My spirit lives in silent sighs
And gazing upon thee
I hear thy silence make replies
To every thing but me
I see thy silence talk to flowers
The birds will sing to thee
And lonely in these lonely hours
You never talk to me

2

I never hear thy voice nor know
Its sound in fancy's ear
A silent shade where'ere I go
In beauty hovers near