love poems

Was there love once? I have forgotten her.
Was there grief once? Grief yet is mine.
Other loves I have, men rough, but men who stir
More grief, more joy, than love of thee and thine.

Faces cheerful, full of whimsical mirth,
Lined by the wind, burned by the sun;
Bodies enraptured by the abounding earth,
As whose children we are brethern: one.

And any moment may descend hot death
To shatter limbs! Pulp, tear, blast
Belovèd soldiers who love rough life and breath

Enough of love! Let break its every hold!
Ended my youthful folly! for I know
That, like the dazzling, glister-shedding snow,
Celia, thou art beautiful, but cold.
I do not find in thee that warmth which glows,
Which, all these dreary days, my heart has sought,
That warmth without which love is lifeless, naught
More than a painted fruit, a waxen rose.

Such love as thine, scarce can it bear love's name,
Deaf to the pleading notes of his sweet lyre,
A frank, impulsive heart I wish to claim,

In moments to delight devoted,
'My life!' with tenderest tone you cry;
Dear words! on which my heart had doted,
If youth could neither fade nor die.

To death even hours like these must roll,
Ah! then repeat those accents never;
Or change 'my life!' into 'my soul!'
Which, like my love, exists for ever.
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AN OTHER VERSION

You call me still your life.--Oh! change the word--
Life is as transient as the inconstant sigh:
Say rather I'm your soul; more just that name,

If I, dearest Lily, did not love thee,

How this prospect would enchant my sight!
And yet if I, Lily, did not love thee,

Could I find, or here, or there, delight?

ERE yet the dawn
Pushed rosy fingers up the arch of day
And smiled its promise to the voiceless prime,
Love sat and patterns wove at life's great loom.

He flung the suns into the soundless arch,
Appointed them their courses in the deep,
To keep His great time-harmonies, and blaze
As beacons in the ebon fields of night.
Love balanced them and held them firm and true,
Poised 'twixt attractive and repulsive drift
Amid the throngs of heaven. What though this power
Was ever known to us as gravity,

ONCE for thy brow a wreath I wished to wind,
And, seeking long, I could no flowers find.
Now golden flowers are blooming far and near,
But, ah! dear love, thou art no longer here.

Did I believe the angels soon would call
You, my beloved, to the other shore,
And I should never see you any more,
I love you so I know that I should fall
Into dejection utterly, and all
Love's pretty pageantry, wherein we bore
Twin banners bravely in the tumult's fore,
Would seem as shadows idling on a wall.
So daintily I love you that my love
Endures no rumor of the winter's breath,
And only blossoms for it thinks the sky
Forever gracious, and the stars above
Forever friendly. Even the fear of death

FRIENDS, whom she look’d at blandly from her couch
And her white wrist above it, gem-bedew’d,
Were arguing with Pentheusa: she had heard
Report of Creon’s death, whom years before
She listen’d to, well-pleas’d; and sighs arose;
For sighs full often fondle with reproofs
And will be fondled by them. When I came
After the rest to visit her, she said,
“Myrtis! how kind! Who better knows than thou
The pangs of love? and my first love was he!”
Tell me (if ever, Eros! are reveal’d

MY faint spirit was sitting in the light
   Of thy looks, my love;
   It panted for thee like the hind at noon
   For the brooks, my love.
Thy barb, whose hoofs outspeed the tempest's flight,
   Bore thee far from me;
   My heart, for my weak feet were weary soon,
   Did companion thee.

Ah! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed,
   Or the death they bear,
   The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove
   With the wings of care;
In the battle, in the darkness, in the need,

And who feels discord now or sorrow?
Love is the universe to-day--
These are the slaves of dim to-morrow,
Darkening Life's labyrinthine way.