love poems for her

I know thou lovest a brimming measure,
And art a kindly, cordial host;
But let me fill and drink at pleasure--
Thus I enjoy the goblet most.

I fear that love disturbs my rest,
Yet feel not love's impassioned care;
I think there's madness in my breast
Yet cannot find that madness there!

This is no case of petty right or wrong
That politicians or philosophers
Can judge. I hate not Germans, nor grow hot
With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers.
Beside my hate for one fat patriot
My hatred of the Kaiser is love true:--
A kind of god he is, banging a gong.
But I have not to choose between the two,
Or between justice and injustice. Dinned
With war and argument I read no more
Than in the storm smoking along the wind
Athwart the wood. Two witches' cauldrons roar.
From one the weather shall rise clear and gay;

These things that poets said
Of love seemed true to me
When I loved and I fed
On love and poetry equally.

But now I wish I knew
If theirs were love indeed,
Or if mine were the true
And theirs some other lovely weed:

For certainly not thus,
Then or thereafter, I
Loved ever. Between us
Decide, good Love, before I die.

Only, that once I loved
By this one argument
Is very plainly proved:
I, loving not, am different.

Oh Love! how fondly, tenderly enshrined
In human hearts, how with our being twined!
Immortal principle, in mercy given,
The brightest mirror of the joys of heaven.
Child of Eternity's unclouded clime,
Too fair for earth, too infinite for time:
A seraph watching o'er Death's sullen shroud,
A sunbeam streaming through a stormy cloud;
An angel hovering o'er the paths of life,
But sought in vain amidst its cares and strife;
Claimed by the many--known but to the few
Who keep thy great Original in view;

When these eyes, long dimmed with weeping,
In the silent dust are sleeping;
When above my narrow bed
The breeze shall wave the thistle's head--
Thou wilt think of me, love!

When the queen of beams and showers
Comes to dress the earth with flowers;
When the days are long and bright,
And the moon shines all the night--
Thou wilt think of me, love!

When the tender corn is springing,
And the merry thrush is singing;
When the swallows come and go,

At poet's tears,
Sweeter than any smiles but hers,
She laughs; I sigh;
And yet I could not live if she should die.

And when in June
Once more the cuckoo spoils his tune,
She laughs at sighs;
And yet she says she loves me till she dies.

On Juda's Cliff I love to lean and look
On waves that battling beat and break with might,
While farther seaward in a bland delight,
I see them shining where a rainbow shook.
On Juda's Cliff I love to lean and look
On waves that like sea-armies swing to sight,
To send upon the shore their billows white,
And, ebbing, to leave pearls in every nook.

Thus, Poet, in your youth when storms are wild
And passions break upon the heart and brain,
To leave their ruin there--shipwreck and waste--

They sleep well here whom Allah loved and kept
And treasured in his vineyard fair and fine,
Most lustrous of the Orient pearls that shine,
Which youth found where the waves of passion swept.
Here, where in peace perpetual they have slept,
A turban beckons where the roses twine,
A banner flutters out in silken line,
And sometimes here a Giaour's name is kept.

Oh! roses of this paradise of old,
The eyes that loved not Allah saw you not,
Nor arms that prayed not eastward could enfold!

Land of the gentle and brave!
Our love is as wide as thy woe;
It deepens beside every grave
Where the heart of a hero lies low.

Land of the sunniest skies!
Our love glows the more for thy gloom;
Our hearts, by the saddest of ties,
Cling closest to thee in thy doom.

Land where the desolate weep
In a sorrow no voice may console!
Our tears are but streams, making deep
The ocean of love in our soul.

Land where the victor's flag waves,
Where only the dead are free!

Now in the oak the sap of life is welling,
Tho' to the bough the rusty leafage clings;
Now on the elm the misty buds are swelling;
Every little pine-wood grows alive with wings;
Blue-jays are fluttering, yodeling and crying,
Meadow-larks sailing low above the faded grass,
Red-birds whistling clear, silent robins flying,--
Who has waked the birds up? What has come to pass?

Last year's cotton-plants, desolately bowing,
Tremble in the March-wind, ragged and forlorn,
Red are the hillsides of the early ploughing,