love poem

Heart ! my heart! what means this feeling?
What oppresseth thee so sore?
What strange life is o'er me stealing!
I acknowledge thee no more.
Fled is all that gave thee gladness,
Fled the cause of all thy sadness,
Fled thy peace, thine industry—
Ah, why suffer it to be?

Say, do beauty's graces youthful,
Does this form so fair and bright,
Does this gaze, so kind, so truthful,
Chain thee with unceasing might?
Would I tear me from her boldly,
Courage take, and fly her coldly,
Back to her I'm forthwith led

I hoped that he would love me,
And he has kissed my mouth,
But I am like a stricken bird
That cannot reach the south.

For though I know he loves me,
To-night my heart is sad;
His kiss was not so wonderful
As all the dreams I had.

LOVE-MAKING is like haymaking, soon over,
And both are mutable throughout their season.
Haymaker! hear me; thou too hear me, lover,
Nor scorn experience nor be deaf to reason.
Be quick at work; the sunny hours won't last,
And storms may come before they half are past.

Where all is black,
Love is the light for creatures looking in
Behind her red rose blush and lily skin;
A lamp that yet we lack.

Fast-anchor'd eternal O love! O woman I love!
O bride! O wife! more resistless than I can tell, the thought of you!
Then separate, as disembodied or another born,
Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation,
I ascend, I float in the regions of your love O man,
O sharer of my roving life.

She was a wet nurse, but I was afraid.
Night and day, “My child,” she sobbed,
“I'm all bones,” and saying, “If I die,”
with love fiercer than mother's,
held me tight.—As if to say, “I'll be sad.”

She was a wet nurse, but how afraid I was.
Devotion, a moment before death;
her tearless, aged eyes
with love fiercer than mother's
stared at me—bluish white.

She was a wet nurse, but I can't forget her.
Aggrieved, confused with doubts,
she huddled up like water when I cried,

When the rose becomes incarnate in the lips, of woman, sweet
Will the night's arms be to dream in and the morn's embrace to meet:
When the sea's soul pours its pureness through the eyes of woman, then
Will the angel flash forth godlike through the answering eyes of men.

Woe to man who sees too clearly all love's mystic inner deeps,
For eternal pain pursues him when he wakes or when he sleeps;
Anguish changeless, everlasting,—for he knows love's heaven too well
And he seeks on earth to find it, and he finds not heaven, but hell.

O Earth! Earth! Earth heare thou my voice, and be
Loving, and gentle for to cover me;
Banish'd from thee I live; ne'r to return,
Unlesse thou giv'st my small Remains an Urne.

It is already Autumn, and not in my heart only,
The leaves are on the ground,
Green leaves untimely browned,
The leaves bereft of Summer, my heart of Love left lonely.

Swift, in the masque of seasons, the moment of each mummer,
And even so fugitive
Love's hour, Love's hour to live:
Yet, leaves, ye have had your rapture, and thou, poor heart, thy Summer!

As a most happy mother feels the stir
Of that new life which quickens with her life,
And knows that virtue has gone forth from her
To doubly sanctify the name of wife;
Yet, for her joy's sake, and because her pride
Is too unutterably sanctified,
And all the heaven of heavens within her breast
Too dearly and too intimately possessed,
Speaks not a word, but folds her new delight
With a rapt silence, comforting as night;
So, when I felt the quickening life that came
To bid my life's long-slumbering currents move,