love poems for her

Affections, passions, many there may be
In the soul's life. But one
Great love brings absolute fierce sovereignty:
Stars tremble at the sun.

The great love gathers in its wide embrace
Affections, passions all.
Where there were many, now shines but one face;
The old love-temples fall.

This is the wonder of surpassing love;
Its marvel and its doom.
A sudden wind sweeps grimly from above
And leaves one flower in bloom:

One, only one. Man rises to his height
Of being when he knows

We know not yet what heavenly love shall be,
Save that it shall be sweet.
Yet this I know: that utmost heaven one me
Shines, when I hear thy feet.

Heaven will be glad and full of calm to me,
Dead will be all despair,
If but my glance may fall again on thee,—
If only thou art there!

Because thou hast not made me smile, but thou
Hast made me weep,
I know that I shall love thee even as now
When death brings sleep.

Because at last I tremble as I fall
Before Love's feet,
I know I love thee, sweetheart, more than all
Who made life sweet.

Because at last I sorrow and am afraid
And dread Love's hand,—
Because an agony lest loveless shade
Blot out Love's land

Possesses me,—I know that all my heart
Is thine indeed,
And that strong love of thee, not love of Art,
Is now my creed.

When Heine lay upon his bed of pain
Helpless, the end being near,
Love sought his couch, and sought it like a fane,
Brightening the prospect drear.

Young love was near him on that dying bed.
A young girl's gentle heart
Yearned over Heine's world-worn weary head
And worshipped Heine's Art.

He loved her with the love intense and wild
A genius-spirit brings:
She on this earth of ours as yet a child;—
He 'mid the next world's kings.

So when he died, their spirits could not part.
She held him with her bloom;

I used to love fair Art with golden wings;
I loved her like a bride;
I met her by blue streams and forest springs;
I wandered at her side.

The sunsets held her, and the morning's gold
Circled her peerless hair:
Deep fern and heather draped the summer wold,
And buoyant Art was there.

And in sweet music Art's sweet spirit spoke;
And over the wild sea
Her face like sudden lustrous morning broke
Triumphant upon me.

So all my youth was passed. I worshipped her,
Fair Art, with love supreme,

If I love thee with love surpassing and excelling
All love that song or strange high history hath for telling,
All love-dreams of the past,
Then wilt not thou love me with love that never dreamer
In noblest moments dreamed,—love softer and supremer?
Will thy love-look not seek mine at the last?

If I can bring thee love outweighing and exceeding
The common love of man, wilt thou not hear its pleading
With tenderer than the heart
Of women who are crowned with love that lasts no longer

Beauty thou hast to thrill the hearts of men:
But wilt thou seek for nothing more?
Not seek the loveliness that lasteth when
Life's loveliness is o'er?

Win thou a glory of sweet heart and mind
As noble as thy face is sweet:
Let me, love-seeking, ever surely find
Christ's eyes when thine I meet.

There is a love so deep it travels far
Beyond the reach of words. E'en love-songs jar
When the great depths are stirred.
The blue vast heaven responds to God who made
Its depths profound of awful light and shade
Sometimes without one word.

When heaven is full of love, no thunders leap
Along the heights of the abysmal steep:
Nay! all is silent then.
There is a love so full of silent peace
That even solemn stately love-chants cease
Or are not heard of men.

O love, be with me in my silent hours

For thee I have achieved hard things and dread.—I know it.
But what were heart of man, and, least of all, of poet,
If this he could not do?
The impossible to love is possible, and easy.
The God who first began his flower-work by the daisy
Conceived at last his rose of fieriest hue.

So I who first began my love-work by soft singing
Of love that passed away, now send a strong song ringing
Along the fields of air.
I who have sung of charm of meadow-sweet and daisy
And stooped to gather buds in morning's uplands hazy

I crave thine highest love.—No mere swift temporal passion,
That gives, then passes on in boyish girlish fashion;
No momentary thing;
But love that ever grows to higher tenderer beauty:
The love whose heart is one with the strong soul of duty:
The love whereat the stars rejoice and sing.

The love of thy deep soul. The love that, daily growing,
Sees ever, as the path, along the mountains going,
Winds upward day by day,
New heights of sacred joy before its footstep gleaming:
The love whose heart is one with woman's softest dreaming: