love poem

They lie who say that love must be
A sickness and a misery;
He that ne'er loved woman knows
Never anything but woes.

I too love a woman; yet
My clear eyes are never wet;
Death has claimed me for his own,
Yet I live by love alone.

Clad in flesh and blood I move,
Though a swan-white maid I love;
Though I love, I eat and sleep,
Music's service still I keep.

I'm no reed in water swaying,
My free thought goes lightly playing;
I'm no lover chill through all
The piled cloaks of Donegal.

Man relies on facts, but love is the test of a woman;
If she do not love, sentence is entered at once.

The lowest trees have tops; the ant her gall;
The fly her spleen; the little sparks their heat:
The slender hairs cast shadows, though but small;
And bees have stings, although they be not great.
Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs;
And love is love, in beggars as in kings.

Where rivers smoothest run, deep are the fords;
The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move;
The firmest faith is in the fewest words;
The turtles cannot sing, and yet they love.
True hearts have eyes, and ears, no tongues to speak;

'Gainst Love's unerring darts there's no defence,
They wound the blockhead, and the man of sense.

When other lips and other eyes
Their tales of love shall tell,
Which means the usual sort of lies
You've heard from many a swell;
When, bored with what you feel is bosh,
You'd give the world to see
A friend whose love you know will wash,
Oh, then remember me!

When Signor Solo goes his tours,
And Captain Craft's at Ryde,
And Lord Fitzpop is on the moors,
And Lord knows who beside;
When to exist you feel a task
Without a friend at tea,
At such a moment I but ask
That you'll remember me.

She sews the morning hours away,
She sews away the noon;
She sews as glittering seasons pass—
June, October, June.
And as her needle runs she sings
A little ravelling tune—
She sings a ravelling tune.

She sings with words as light as breath
And soft as April rain,
And of the song she sings none hears
More than the thin refrain—
The ravelling refrain:
O some may sew for love's own sake,
And some must sew for pain.

Below the world of life moves by
As life must ever move—
Must ever, ever move,

I' VE had the heart-ache many times,
At the mere mention of a name
I've never woven in my rhymes,
Though from it inspiration came.
It is in truth a holy thing,
Life-cherished from the world apart—
A dove that never tries its wing,
But broods and nestles in the heart.

That name of melody recalls
Her gentle look and winning ways
Whose portrait hangs on memory's walls,
In the fond light of other days.
In the dream-land of Poetry,
Reclining in its leafy bowers,
Her bright eyes in the stars I see,

By one God created, by one S AVIOUR saved,
By one S PIRIT lighted, by one MARK engraved,
We're taught in the wisdom our spirits approve,
To cherish the spirit of B ROTHERLY LOVE .
Love, love, Brotherly love—
This world hath no spirit like Brotherly love.

In the land of the stranger we Masons abide,
In forest, in quarry, on Lebanon's side;
Yon temple we're building, the plan's from above,
And we labor, supported by B ROTHERLY LOVE .

Though the service be hard, and the wages be scant,

O F all the wares so pretty
That come into the city,
There's none are so delicious,
There's none are half so precious,
As those which we are bringing.
O, listen to our singing!
Young loves to sell! young loves to sell!
My pretty loves who'll buy?

First look you at the oldest,
The wantonest, the boldest!
So loosely goes he hopping,
From tree and thicket dropping,
Then flies aloft as sprightly—
We dare but praise him lightly!
The fickle rogue! Young loves to sell!
My pretty loves who'll buy?

It's that old devil called love again,
Gets behind me, keeps giving me that shove again,
Putting rain in my eyes, tears in my dreams,
And rocks in my head.
It's that sly son-of-a-gun again,
He keeps telling me that I'm the lucky one again,
But I still have that rain, still have those tears,
And those rocks in my head.
Suppose I didn't stay—
Ran away, wouldn't play—
That devil, what a potion he would brew.
He'd follow me around, fill me up, tear me down,
Till I'd be so bewildered, I wouldn't know what to do.