love poems

So sweet with spring the night and warm,
That flowers are peeping through;
My heart must guard it well from harm,
Or it will love anew.

But which of all the flowers dear
Is like to be the snarer?
The nightingales are singing clear,
" The lily; so beware her! "

In my heart there's music low,
Lovely bells are chiming;
Little song, swell out and go
Springward with your rhyming.

To the bowers that house the flowers
Hasten for the meeting.
If you chance upon a rose,
Say, I send her greeting.

The lovely eyes of the spring-sweet night
Look down and heal my pain:
" Has Love abased thee with his might,
O Love will raise again. "

And Philomela on the lime
Now sweetly sings her sadness;
The music's goal is in my soul,
That hears, and swells for gladness.

Like a maiden shy for gladness,
Leaves unfold them in the wood;
" Gentle Spring, I give thee greeting! "
Laughs the sun in merry mood.

'Tis, O nightingale! thy music
'Plaining blissful in the grove;
Long and sweet thy notes are sobbing,
And thy song is utter love!

I love a tender soul thus housed
Within a body white and fair:
Great fearless eyes, and forehead wreathed
With heavy clouds of shadowy hair!

You are so right in every way;
What I have sought in every land!
Besides, your worth enables you
So well my worth to understand!

You've found in me the man you need,
And, for a time, will fully pay
With love's delight, and kisses fond—
And then, as usual, betray.

A fine house!
Sparrows love the millet
"round back.

SUNLIGHT .

Thirteen long years have passed away
 Since through those autumn woods we went:
It was a bright September day,
 And I was full of sweet content;
So happy by her side to be—
In heaven, if she but looked at me.

The leaves were turning golden-red;
 The swift stream splashed along the dale;
In the far distance, blue, outspread,
 Boundless, with here and there a sail,
The sunlit sea gleamed, saying, “To-night
Reseek my green cliff's moonlit height.”

Birds, flowers, and foliage of the summer days
And skies above us lordly and serene
And forests measureless and deep and green
And blue glad billows bounding through the bays
And hyacinths and honeysuckle-sprays
And roses that against the window lean
Take ye my song, and bear it to my queen:
Teach her to understand my love and lays!

As the past lengthens, far intenser grow
All noble love and passion. Love that fades
Was never love. Now the tall tree-tops throw
A longer shadow down the silent glades

Though thou art bound, and canst not love me now
Save only in spirit, can they stay my song?
Can it not find thee when night-hours are long
And print a far-off soft kiss on thy brow?
Can it not lurk within the hazel bough?
Can it not shine amid the starry throng?
Fulfil thy life's task: be thou glad and strong:
But this true homage further and allow!

Art thou asleep, love? Then my soul is there,
Watching. Dost thou the wakeful moments count?
Then am I with thee. At this crystal fount

Hath anything been ever quite so fair
As first love, though the lengthening years have brought
Result of labour, red-ripe fruit of thought,
And new glad summers full of fragrant air?
The swift years pass us. Doth each swift year bear
Our spirits nearer to the goals we sought?
Though we have wrestled, suffered, toiled and fought,
Doth any aureole rest upon our hair?

The sweetest crown of all the crowns life brings
Is just to feel love very close indeed:
Love, the true God who lives within each creed