love poems for her

Oh! leave the past to buy its own dead.
The past is naught to us, the present all.
What need of last year's leaves to strew Love's bed?
What need of ghosts to grace a festival?
I would not, if I could, those days recall,
Those days not ours. For us the feast is spread.
The lamps are lit, and music plays withal.
Then let us love and leave the rest unsaid.
This island is our home. Around it roar
Great gulfs and oceans, channels, straits and seas.
What matter in what wreck we reached the shore,

I DID not choose thee, dearest. It was Love
That made the choice, not I. Mine eyes were blind
As a rude shepherd's who to some lone grove
His offering brings and cares not at what shrine
He bends his knee. The gifts alone were mine;
The rest was Love's. He took me by the hand,
And fired the sacrifice, and poured the wine,
And spoke the words I might not understand.
   I was unwise in all but the dear chance
Which was my fortune, and the blind desire
Which led my foolish steps to Love's abode,

Imagination cannot rise above thee;
Near and afar I see thee, and I love thee;
My misery away from me I thrust it,
For thy perfection I behold, and trust it.

I heard a cry in the night,
A thousand miles it came,
Sharp as a flash of light,
My name, my name!

It was your voice I heard,
You waked and loved me so--
I send you back this word,
I know, I know!

Auspicious poet, wert thou not my friend,
How could I envy, what I must commend!
But since 'tis nature's law, in love and wit,
That youth should reign, and withering age submit,
With less regret those laurels I resign,
Which, dying on my brows, revive on thine.
With better grace an ancient chief may yield
The long contended honours of the field,
Than venture all his fortune at a cast,
And fight, like Hannibal, to lose at last.
Young princes, obstinate to win the prize,

434

To love thee Year by Year—
May less appear
Than sacrifice, and cease—
However, dear,
Forever might be short, I thought to show—
And so I pieced it, with a flower, now.

My Muse in meads has spent her many hours
Sitting, and sorting several sorts of flowers,
To make for others garlands; and to set
On many a head here, many a coronet.
But amongst all encircled here, not one
Gave her a day of coronation;
Till you, sweet mistress, came and interwove
A laurel for her, ever young as Love.
You first of all crown'd her; she must, of due,
Render for that, a crown of life to you.

Into these Loves who but for Passion looks,
At this first sight here let him lay them by
And seek elsewhere, in turning other books,
Which better may his labor satisfy.
No far-fetch'd sigh shall ever wound my breast,
Love from mine eye a tear shall never wring,
Nor in Ah me's my whining sonnets drest;
A libertine, fantasticly I sing.
My verse is the true image of my mind,
Ever in motion, still desiring change,
And as thus to variety inclin'd,
So in all humours sportively I range.

Tender caresses of kind little sisters
Are ready for you.
With the birds' songs, O the charmed prince,
We're waiting for you.
Branch drunk with sun, you grew, visage of heaven
Before my eyes.
Like a girl tender, like a child quiet,
All - surprise.
They'll often say: 'These sisters are treacherous
In each reply!'
Cocky with daring ones, kids with a boy, timid
With someone shy.
We love, like you, melting clouds and birches
And melted snow.
We love the tales about grandmother's daughters,

Hide this one night thy crescent, kindly Moon;

So shall Endymion faithful prove, and rest

Loving and unawakened on thy breast;

So shall no foul enchanter importune

Thy quiet course; for now the night is boon,

And through the friendly night unseen I fare,

Who dread the face of foemen unaware,

And watch of hostile spies in the bright noon.

Thou knowest, Moon, the bitter power of Love;

’Tis told how shepherd Pan found ways to move,