love poems

You that with allegory's curious frame
Of others' children changelings use to make,
With me those pains for God's sake do not take:
I list not dig so deep for brazen fame.
When I say ‘Stella ’, I do mean the same
Princess of beauty, for whose only sake
The reins of Love I love, though never slake,
And joy therein, though nations count it shame.
I beg no subject to use eloquence,
Nor in hid ways to guide philosophy;
Look at my hands for no such quintessence,

Rich fools there be, whose base and filthy heart
Lies hatching still the goods wherein they flow:
And damning their own selves to Tantal 's smart,
Wealth breeding want, more blest, more wretched grow.
Yet to those fools heav'n such wit doth impart,
As what their hands do hold, their heads do know,
And knowing, love, and loving, lay apart,
As sacred things, far from all danger's show.
But that rich fool, who by blind fortune's lot
The richest gem of love and life enjoys,
And can with foul abuse such beauties blot;

In nature apt to like when I did see
Beauties, which were of manie Carrets fine,
My boiling sprites did thither soone incline,
And, Love, I thought that I was full of thee:
But finding not those restlesse flames in me,
Which others said did make their soules to pine:
I thought those babes of some pinnes hurt did whine,
By my soule judging what Loves paine might be.
But while I thus with this yong Lyon plaid;
Mine eyes (shall I say curst or blest) beheld
Stella ; now she is nam'd, need more be said?

Thou hearest the Nightingale begin the Song of Spring;

The lark sitting upon his earthy bed, just as the morn
Appears, listens silent, then springing from the waving Corn-field, loud
He leads the Choir of Day--
Mounting upon the wing of light into the Great Expanse,
Re-echoing against the lovely blue and shining heavenly Shell,

His little throat labours with inspiration, every feather
On throat and breast and wings vibrates with the effluence Divine.
All nature listens silent to him, and the awful Sun

But that same night in Cornwall oversea
Couched at Queen Iseult's hand, against her knee,
With keen kind eyes that read her whole heart's pain
Fast at wide watch lay Tristram's hound Hodain,
The goodliest and the mightiest born on earth,
That many a forest day of fiery mirth
Had plied his craft before them; and the queen
Cherished him, even for those dim years between,
More than of old in those bright months far flown
When ere a blast of Tristram's horn was blown
Each morning as the woods rekindled, ere

To my louing and deere mother, the citly of Hereford.

E PIG . 281.

H EREFORDE , haue with thee! nay I cannot haue
That which thou hast; for thou hast mirth and ease,—
I say not slouth, lest I should thee depraue;
Yet ease can haue no paine that can displease
Hadst thou lesse ease thy mirth would bee the more;
For painefull hands in fine make pleasant harts.
But idle hands make harts to labour sore
With sorrow that annoyes the other parts
But in thy bozome thou hast many heads

To my louing friend Stephen Boughton one of the gentlemen of his Maiestie's Chappell.

S CENTOR the Greeke that with his thundring voice
 Could drownd the din of fifty showting men,
(Albec't they made most admirable noise)
Can not compare with thee, my good Stephen:
 Who with thy voyce dost make each quire to shake;
 Whose diapassons like great deuills speake.

Blind loving wrestling touch! Sheathed hooded sharptoothed touch!
Did it make you ache so leaving me?

Parting tracked by arriving . . . . perpetual payment of the perpetual loan,
Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.

Sprouts take and accumulate . . . . stand by the curb prolific and vital,
Landscapes projected masculine full-sized and golden.

What sounds are those, Helvellyn, that are heard
Up to thy summit, through the depth of air
Ascending, as if distance had the power
To make the sounds more audible? What crowd
Covers, or sprinkles o'er, yon village green?
Crowd seems it, solitary hill! to thee,
Though but a little family of men,
Shepherds and tillers of the ground—betimes
Assembled with their children and their wives,
And here and there a stranger interspersed.
They hold a rustic fair—a festival,
Such as, on this side now, and now on that,

What sounds are those, Helvellyn, which are heard
Up to thy summit, through the depth of air
Ascending, as if distance had the power
To make the sounds more audible? What crowd
Is yon, assembled in the gay green field?
Crowd seems it, solitary hill! to thee,
Though but a little family of men,
Twice twenty, with their children and their wives,
And here and there a stranger interspersed.
It is a summer festival — a fair,
Such as, on this side now, and now on that,
Repeated through his tributary vales,