love poem

‘Fear not, O maidens, shivering
As bunches of the dew-drenched leaves
In the calm moonlight . . . it is the cold sends quivering
My voice, a little nightingale that grieves.

Now Time beats not, and dead Love is forgotten . . .
The spirit too is dead and dank and rotten,

And I forget the moment when I ran
Between my lover and the sworded man—

Blinded with terror lest I lose his heart.
The sworded man dropped, and I saw depart

Love and my lover and my life . . . he fled

In thy heart of yore, Beloved, More concern for lovers' care was;
Yea, with us thy loving-kindness Talk of people everywhere was.

Be that commerce of the night-time Aye remembered when of lovers'
Bond and circle and Love's myst'ries Talk among the sweet-lipped fair was!

Though those moonfaced lovelings' beauty Ravished heart and faith and reason,
Yet our love for pleasant nature, Grace and fashions debonair was.

If the shade of the Beloved On the lover fell, what wonder?
Her we needed and desirous She of us, to make the pair, was.

Blind, glorious, aged martyr, saint, and sage!
The poet's mission God revealed to thee,
To lift men's souls to H IM —to make them free;—
With tyranny and grossness war to wage—
A worshipper of truth and love to be—
To reckon all things nought but these alone;—
To nought but mind and truth to bow the knee—
To make the soul a love-exalted throne!
Man of the noble spirit—Milton, thou
All this didst do! A living type thou wert
Of what the soul of man to be may grow—
The pure perfection of the love-fraught heart!

I was going on my way, when a lovely being met me,
Coquettish were her glances, and her smiles were bright as day.
Sure her form was of a woman, but her nature of a fairy,
Like silver was her body, but her heart was hard as stone.
To the town we entered, hand in hand with one another,
Then from me she parted, now I seek her to Bokhara.
Many are the tokens of the beauty of her person,
How can I tell you by what signs she may be known.
Tall and bright-complexioned, in her stature like the Cypress,

This is the time for birds to mate;
To-day the dove
Will mark the ancient amorous date
With moans of love;
The crow will change his call to prate
His hopes thereof.

The starling will display the red
That lights his wings;
The wren will know the sweet things said
By him who swings
And ducks and dips his crested head
And sings and sings.

They are obedient to their blood,
Nor ask a sign,
Save buoyant air and swelling bud,
At hands divine,
But choose, each in the barren wood,

True lovers are omnipotent:
They step from peak to peak,
From star to star
In happy pilgrimage,
To the kind Universe alone, responsible.

Prithee, Billy,
Ben't so silly
Thus to waste thy days in grief;
You say Betty
Will not let you,
But can sorrow give relief?

Leave repining,
Cease your whining,
Pox on torment, grief and woe;
If she's tender
She'll surrender,
If she's tough—e'en let her go.

So Love is dead that has been quick so long!
Close, then, his eyes, and bear him to his rest,
With eglantine and myrtle on his breast,
And leave him there, their pleasant scents among;
And chant a sweet and melancholy song
About the charms whereof he was possessed,
And how of all things he was loveliest,
And to compare with aught were him to wrong.
Leave him beneath the still and solemn stars,
That gather and look down from their far place
With their long calm our brief woes to deride,
Until the Sun the Morning's gate unbars

Come, you whose loves are dead,
And, whiles I sing,
Weep, and wring
Every hand, and every head
Bind with cypress and sad yew;
Ribbons black and candles blue
For him that was of men most true!

Come with heavy mourning,
And on his grave
Let him have
Sacrifice of sighs and groaning;
Let him have fair flowers enow,
White and purple, green and yellow,
For him that was of men most true!

O Love , O thou that, for my fealty,
Only in torment dost thy power employ,
Give me, for God's sake, something of thy joy,
That I may learn what good there is in thee.
Yea, for, if thou art glad with grieving me,
Surely my very life thou shalt destroy
When thou renew'st my pain, because the joy
Must then be wept for with the misery.
He that had never sense of good, nor sight,
Esteems his ill estate but natural,
Which so is lightlier borne: his case is mine.
But, if thou wouldst uplift me for a sign,