love poems for her

Had I been true to my deep loneliness,
Nor sought a lesser love to soothe my grief,
Had I been willing not to find relief,
But so to live, companioned by distress,
I, sometimes, to my inner soul confess
The fierce and inarticulate belief
That such despair forever held in fief
Could heal my spirit better than caress.
I have done nothing wrong — I only take
A human love that longed to lift my woe,
I only give a tender sympathy,
And yet — ah! yet, I sometimes long to wake
Alone, to taste again the bitter throe

Love has a myriad of winning ways
Beside the wells of his deep tenderness,
The frolic of his fugitive caress
As in my hair his wanton finger strays,
The lyric laughter of his witching gaze
That draws my own, reluctant, to confess
The swift response that borders on distress,
So clearly it my willing heart betrays.
Love sometimes makes a petulant pretense
Of injured dignity that he doth feign,
As though, in truth, his wayward heart did swell
With artless ardor in his own defence, —
A playful parody of poignant pain,

OH ! a wan cloud was drawn
O'er the dim, weeping dawn,
As to Shannon's side I returned at last;
And the heart in my breast
For the girl I loved best
Was beating — ah beating, how loud and fast

While the doubts and the fears
Of the long, aching years
Seemed mingling their voices with the moaning flood;
Till full in my path,
Like a wild water-wraith,
My true love's shadow lamenting stood.

But the sudden sun kissed

Would I were Erin's apple-blossom o'er you,
Or Erin's rose in all its beauty blown,
To drop my richest petals down before you,
Within the garden where you walk alone;
In hope you'd turn and pluck a little posy,
With loving fingers through my foliage pressed,
And kiss it close and set it blushing rosy
To sigh out all its sweetness on your breast.

Would I might take the pigeon's flight towards you,
And perch beside your window-pane above,
And murmur how my heart of hearts it hoards you,

In mirth he mocks the other birds at noon,
Catching the lilt of every easy tune;
But when the day departs he sings of love,—
His own wild song beneath the listening moon.

I ROSE at midnight and beheld the sky,
Sown thick with stars, like grains of golden sand
Which God had scattered loosely from His hand
Upon the floorways of His house on high;
And straight I pictured to my spirit's eye
The giant worlds, their course by wisdom planned,
The weary waste, the gulfs no sight hath spanned,
And endless time for ever passing by.

Then, filled with wonder and a secret dread,
I crept to where my child lay fast asleep,
With chubby arm beneath his golden head

Meek , passionless, precise, with pallid face,
Judas grew up, his mother's constant joy,
Who thanked Jehovah daily that her boy
Of boyhood's viciousness had not a trace.
Yet, in the heart of that which she thought grace
A devil lurked, more subtle to destroy
Than any other Satan doth employ
To wreak his vengeance on the human race.

In after years, the man's soul grew so dead,
That when he met Love's Self and held Love's Hand,
Nay, kissed Love's Lips, he still could Love withstand.

FOUND IN H ERCULANEUM

What eyes have worshipped thee, O passionless
Cold stone, thou darling beauty of dead men
And buried worlds! What hearts in those days when
Beauty was god have longed for thy caress,
As, 'mid voluptuous feast and wild excess,
They saw the dawn-light of the Eastern skies
Crimson that brow and kindle in those eyes,
And felt their glutted passion's emptiness.
And still thou mockest us, O cruel stone,
And still thine eyes are gazing far away,
Drawing out man's love that loves thee all in vain.

Who hath not seen my love? Her violet eyes
Like morning blooms awake, and, all aglow,
The heav'nly fruitage yet untasted lies
On the full lip which swells and smiles below.
The movements of her noiseless feet keep time
To tremulous music of a world-old song
Which all the Hours do breathe into her ear;
And many, many languish in their prime,
For hopeless love of her who hath been long
My chiefest joy through the full-seasoned year.

Be not too boist'rous, or to free to take
Those curls into thy lap, O Summer wind!

Love was wanting songs to sing
On a golden day,
When the earth was bright with Spring
And the flowers of May.

So he lay beside the brink
Of a quiet stream,
Where the cattle go to drink
And the clouds to dream.

Sunbeams lit the woods around,
Breezes fanned his cheek,
And the blossoms on the ground
Almost seemed to speak.

In the branches overhead
Robin sang his love,
And the tender things he said
Filled the skies above.

Flitting through the scented air