love poems

She loves me! From her own bliss-breathing lips
   The live confession came, like rich perfume
   From crimson petals bursting into bloom!
And still my heart at the remembrance skips
Like a young lion, and my tongue, too, trips
   As drunk with joy! while every object seen
   In life's diurnal round wears in its mien
A clear assurance that no doubts eclipse.
And if the common things of nature now
   Are like old faces flushed with new delight,
Much more the consciousness of that rich vow

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills—
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn’t always understand.

Love is the sunlight of the soul,
That, shining on the silken-tressèd head
Of her we love, around it seems to shed
A golden angel-aureole.

And all her ways seem sweeter ways
Than those of other women in that light:
She has no portion with the pallid night,
But is a part of all fair days.

Joy goes where she goes, and good dreams—
Her smile is tender as an old romance
Of Love that dies not, and her soft eye’s glance
Like sunshine set to music seems.

Sweet mother, at the idle loom I lean,
Weary with longing for the boy that still
Remains a dream of loveliness--to fill
My soul, my life, at Aphrodite's will.

Poison, we drink in love - the sweetest one,
But that's the poison, what we drink,
And always pay for joy, that's briefest one,
With sadness of the long days' link.
"The flames of love are flames of happiness",
Everyone says; but what's a fact?
It empties, in its fierce craziness,
The every soul, it attracts!
Who will be able to stifle the memories,
Of days of suffering and happiness,
Of your enchanting days, oh love?
Then I'd return to life, to joy and fun,

My soul; is raying like a star,
My heart is happier than a bird,
And all because, through fortune’s jar,
I hear one little word.
I feel as if all life and might
Had started on a loftier course,
As if all passion and delight
Were deepened at the source.

I feel as if the very air
Was breathed from out the heart of love,
And in my heart, still rapture rare,
Sat brooding like a dove.

O beauty! Even through a word
What powers are thine to raise and bless!

THE fierce exulting worlds, the motes in rays,
   The churlish thistles, scented briers,
The wind-swept bluebells on the sunny braes,
   Down to the central fires,

Exist alike in Love. Love is a sea
   Filling all the abysses dim
Of lornest space, in whose deeps regally
   Suns and their bright broods swim.

This mighty sea of Love, with wondrous tides,
   Is sternly just to sun and grain;
'Tis laving at this moment Saturn's sides,
   'Tis in my blood and brain.

Alas! if I think of her, my throat becomes
dry, my hand falls back, my breasts harden and
hurt, and I shiver and cry as I walk. If I
see her, my heart stops and my hands tremble,
my feet freeze, a redness of flame rises to my
cheeks, my temples beat in agony. If I touch
her, I grow mad, my arms stiffen and my knees
give under me. I fall before her, and I go to
my bed like a woman who is going to die. I feel
I am wounded by every word she speaks. Her love
is a torture, and those who pass by hear my

'Mother! I've seen a little boy
With curling locks and eyes of blue;
They seemed the very eyes for joy,
Though wet with tears like morning dew.
'His shoulders half with wings were hid,
For play-things he had bow and quiver;
And while he sued, as sue he did,
His tears came gushing like a river.
'And sighed, one's very soul to wring,
Soothing the while a prisoned dove;
Yet still that wild ungrateful thing
Strove to be free, but vainly strove.

'So soft he sued, he couldn't fail;

What's wrong with you, with us,
what's happening to us?
Ah our love is a harsh cord
that binds us wounding us
and if we want
to leave our wound,
to separate,
it makes a new knot for us and condemns us
to drain our blood and burn together.

What's wrong with you? I look at you
and I find nothing in you but two eyes
like all eyes, a mouth
lost among a thousand mouths that I have kissed, more beautiful,
a body just like those that have slipped