love poems

I

Ah, what is love, our love, she said,
Ah, what is human love?
A fire, of earthly fuel fed,
Full fain to soar above.
With lambent flame the void it lips,
And of the impassive air
Would frame for its ambitious steps
A heaven-attaining stair.
It wrestles and it climbs — Ah me,
Go look in little space,
White ash on blackened earth will be

O Heaven, and thou most loving family
Of sister stars, whose intermingled light
From the blue home of this most quiet night
Shineth for aye in conscious unity!
Why bend ye thus your kind looks still on me,
That am a wretch, whose passions' ceaseless fight,
And gnawing thoughts of self—an inborn blight—
But vex the warmth of your pure sympathy?
Mine is no cup for you, blest stars, to pour
The rich draught of your sympathies therein;
It mantled once with all the joys of sin,
And I have quaffed them; now is nothing more,

Vayne loves, avaunt! infamous is your pleasure,
Your joye deceite;
Your jewells jestes, and worthles trash your treasure,
Fooles' common baite.
Your pallace is a prison that allureth
To sweete mishapp, and rest that payne procureth.

Your garden, greif hedgd in with thornes of envye
And stakes of strife;
Your allies, errour gravelled with jelosye
And cares of life;
Your bancks, are seates enwrapt with shades of sadnes
Your arbours, breed rough fittes of raging madnes.

I wage no warr, yet peace I none enjoy;
I hope, I feare, I fry in freesing colde;
I mount in mirth, still prostrate in annoye;
I all the worlde imbrace yet nothing holde.
All welth is want where chefest wishes fayle,
Yea life is loath'd where love may not prevayle.

For that I love I long, but that I lacke;
That others love I loath, and that I have;
All worldly fraightes to me are deadly wracke,
Men present happ, I future hopes do crave:
They, loving where they live, long life require,

One by one lights of a skyscraper fling their checkering cross work on the velvet gown of night.
I believe the skyscraper loves night as a woman and brings her playthings she asks for, brings her a velvet gown,
And loves the white of her shoulders hidden under the dark feel of it all.

The masonry of steel looks to the night for somebody it loves,
He is a little dizzy and almost dances . . . waiting . . . dark . . .

Who loves his friend with his heart of hearts
Bends not his head though the sky rain darts,
O, our lifetime wastes to no lofty end
Till the hero is matched with an equal friend.
Poison from the hand of my love were food,
The sweet & the bane do the heart good.
Knowst thou shy Saadi sits ever alone?
Because he cannot part from the darling one.
Saadi

Wondering long, how I could harmless see
Men gazing on those beams that fired me,
At last I found it was the crystal, Love,
Before my heart that did the heat improve:
Which, by contracting of those scatter'd rays
Into itself, did so produce my blaze.
Now, lighted by my love, I see the same
Beams dazzle those, that me are wont t' inflame;
And now I bless my love, when I do think
By how much I had rather burn than wink.
But how much happier were it thus to burn,
If I had liberty to choose my urn!

If you refuse me once and think again,
I will complain.
You are deceiv'd, love is no work of art;
It must be got and born,
Not made and worn,
By every one that hath a heart.
Or do you think they more than once can die,
Whom you deny;
Who tell you of a thousand deaths a day,
Like the old poets feign
And tell the pain
They met, but in the common way?

Or do you think 't too soon to yield,
And quit the field?
Nor is that right; they yield that first entreat:
Once one may crave for love,

CCLXIV

Fortune, what aileth thee
Thus for to banish me
Her company whom I love best?
For to complain me
Nothing availeth me.
Adieu, farewell, this night's rest.

Her demure countenance,
Her homely patience
Hath wounded me through Venus' dart,
That I cannot refrain me
Neither yet abstain me
But needs must love her with all my heart.

Long have I loved her,
Oft have I prayed her.
Yet, alas, she through disdain
Nothing regards me
Nor yet rewards me

CCLXII

Love hath again
Put me to pain
And yet all is but lost.
I serve in vain
And am certain
Of all misliked most.

Both heat and cold
Doth so me hold
And cumbers so my mind
That, when I should
Speak and be bold,
It draweth me still behind.

My wits be past,
My life doth waste,
My comfort is exiled.
And I in haste
Am like to taste
How love hath me beguiled.

Unless that right
May in her sight
Obtain pity and grace,