love poems

If all these Cupids now were blind,
As is their wanton brother,
Or pLay should put it in their mind
To shoot at one another,

What pretty battle they would make
If they their objects should mistake,
And each one wound his mother!

It was no polity of court,
Albe the place were charmed,
To let, in earnest or in sport,
So many Loves in armed;
For say the dames should, with their eyes,
Upon the hearts here mean surprise,
Were not the men like harmed?

Yes, were the Loves or false or straying,

So beauty on the waters stood
When Love had severed earth from flood!
So when he parted air from fire,
He did with concord all inspire!
And then a motion he them taught
That eLder than himself was thought,
Which thought was, yet, the child of earth,
For Love is eLder than his birth.
(from The Masque of Beauty)

When Love at first did move
From out of Chaos, brightened
So was the world, and lightened
As now!
1 ECHO As now!
2 ECHO As now!
Yield, night, then, to the light,
As blackness hath to beauty,
Which is but the same duty.
It was for Beauty that the world was made,
And where she reigns, Love's lights admit no shade.
1 ECHO Love's lights admit no shade.
2 ECHO Admit no shade.
(from The Masque of Beauty)

First printed in Blackwood's Magazine , October, 1846.

I

She has laughed as softly as if she sighed,
She has counted six, and over,
Of a purse well filled and a heart well tried —
Oh, each a worthy lover!
They " give her time;" for her soul must slip
Where the world has set the grooving;
She will lie to none with her fair red lip:
But love seeks truer loving.

II

She trembles her fan in a sweetness dumb,

Maid of my Love, sweet Genevieve!
In Beauty's light you glide along:
Your eye is like the star of eve,
And sweet your Voice, as Seraph's song.
Yet not your heavenly Beauty gives
This heart with passion soft to glow:
Within your soul a Voice there lives!
It bids you hear the tale of Woe.
When sinking low the Suff'rer wan
Beholds no hand outstretcht to save,
Fair, as the bosom of the Swan
That rises graceful o'er the wave,
I've seen your breast with pity heave,
And therefore love I you, sweet Genevieve!

Pale Roamer through the Night! thou poor Forlorn!
Remorse that man on his death-bed possess,
Who in the credulous hour of tenderness
Betrayed, then cast thee forth to Want and Scorn!
The world is pityless: the Chaste one's pride
Mimic of Virtue scowls on thy distress:
Thy Loves and they, that envied thee, deride:
And Vice alone will shelter Wretchedness!
O! I am sad to think, that there should be
Cold-bosom'd Lewd ones, who endure to place
Foul offerings on the shrine of Misery,
And force from Famine the caress of Love!

Come to my longing Arms, my lovely care,
And take the Presents which the Nymphs prepare.
White Lillies in full Canisters they bring,
With all the Glories of the Purple Spring:
The Daughters of the Flood have search'd the Mead
For Violets pale, and cropt the Poppy's Head;
The short Narcissus and fair Daffodil,
Pancies to please the Sight, and Cassia sweet to smell:
And set soft Hyacinths with Iron blue,
To shade marsh Marigolds of shining Hue,
Some bound in Order, others loosely strow'd,

Though nurtured like the sailing moon
In beauty's murderous brood,
She walked awhile and blushed awhile
And on my pathway stood
Until I thought her body bore
A heart of flesh and blood.

But since I laid a hand thereon
And found a heart of stone
I have attempted many things
And not a thing is done,
For every hand is lunatic
That travels on the moon.

She smiled and that transfigured me
And left me but a lout,
Maundering here, and maundering there,
Emptier of thought

[3]

They that love not—are they not as blind camels that behold no
  star in the Desert & must die in it?
  Yea, the coldness of a loveless heart is the coldness of death.

I

When the South sang like a nightingale
Above a bower in May,
The training of Love's vine of flame
Was writ in laws, for lord and dame
To say their yea and nay.

II

When the South sang like a nightingale
Across the flowering night,
And lord and dame held gentle sport,