love poem

I LAY upon my narrow bed,
And dreamed life's happy moments o'er;
I thought that love my footsteps led
Beside a pleasant shore.

Care for a moment loosed its grasp,
And breathing deep the fragrant brine,—
My hand locked in my lover's clasp,—
I felt his pulses throb with mine;

And dear contentment seemed my right,—
There roaming from the world apart;
I saw his eyes, I felt their light
Beam through the shadows, in my heart;

And waves, and trees—all nature—sang
A paeon by that pleasant shore.

My soul goes questing like the honey-bee,
In untrod gardens, where Love walked of old,
And, humming on sweet errands, slyly learns
The secrets the Madonna lilies hold;

Where the Sun Dial Miser jealous counts
His glowing tale of golden-slipping hours,
That all escape, despite his watchful care,
To paint the sun-dreams in the hearts of flowers.

And no one thinks the honey-bees have souls,
That drink the love vow from the blushing rose,
But, by the fountain's silver poetry,
The marble Faun stone-smiles; he better knows.

Love's early honey-moon is passing sweet.
The enraptured lovers wander hand in hand
Through the wild roses and the golden wheat,
And passion's glamour clothes the sea and land.
Her eyes outvie
The starlit sky:
Love is so full of light that nought else gleams.
Love would give light,
Were the world black as night:
Love would create its heaven of stars and dreams!

Then come maturer days. Glad children glance—
Upon the tree of life love's blossoms blow.
And yet some element of old romance

Look upon Sapho's lip, and you will swear,
There is a love-like-leven rising there.

Hark, all you ladies that do sleep!
The fairy queen
Bids you awake, and pity them that weep.
You may do in the dark
What the day doth forbid.
Fear not the dogs that bark;
Night will have all hid.

But if you let your lovers moan,
The fairy queen
Will send abroad her fairies everyone,
That shall pinch black and blue
Your white hands and fair arms,
That did not kindly rue
Your paramours' harms.

In myrtle arbours on the downs,
The fairy queen
This night by moonshine, leading merry rounds,

O, Mark yon Rose-tree! when the West
Breathed on her with too warm a zest
She turns her cheek away;
Yet, if one moment he refrain,
She turns her cheek to him again,
And woos him still to stay!

Is she not like a maiden coy,
Prest by some amorous-breathing boy?
Tho' coy, she courts him too:
Winding away her slender form,
She will not have him woo so warm
And yet will have him woo!

How cold are they who say that Love
Must first be planted in the heart,
And cultured by the hand of Time,
To make its leaves and blossoms start!
No! 'tis a plant that springs at once
Up to the full and perfect form;
Unlike the willow or the oak,
It bends not, breaks not in the storm.

How cold are they who say that Love
Must, like the diamond in the mine,
Be sought with care and polished well
Ere we can see its beauties shine!
No! in the soul's blue Heaven it springs,
With beams that Age can never mar,—

The sweet embodiment of an ideal,
Of vague desires and bazed unconscious yearnings
Suddenly shapened, the soul's inconstant turnings
At once transfixed; of all that sense doth feel
In mute mysterious glimmerings, nor reveal
By any mode of thought's constrained discernings
In channels of wrought words, and mystic burnings
Imaged and transfused to form's semblative seal:
Nay, these poor similies strained to construe
The soul's fine sense that will not brook expression,
A sense that will not mate with reasoned sense,

Lay lips on lips and limb to limb;
Love's here at last, my love. For him
We shut the whole world out this hour.

He holds us close in fired embrace:
His kisses rain from face to face,
Whose thirst drinks in the implored for shower.

Our pulses faint and fail and rise:
My soul through thine, thine through mine eyes
Meet, and are one in heaven indeed.

In heaven or hell? Is it light of fire
Or light of the sun? desire on desire!
Be it hell's or heaven's love scorns to heed.

CLXXXI

Since love is such that, as ye wot,
Cannot always be wisely used,
I say, therefore, then blame me not
Though I therein have been abused.
For as with cause I am accused,
Guilty I grant, such was my lot
And though it cannot be excused
Yet let such folly be forgot.

For in my years of reckless youth
Methought the power of love so great
That to her laws I bound my truth
And to my will there was no let.
Me list no more so far to fet
Such fruit, lo, as of love ensueth.