love poems

We sit, with mourning hearts, beneath the shadow
Which darkens now our home,
And look with longing eyes to that bright region
Where shadows never come.

We think of her, now from our side departed,
In Christian hope and trust:
Gentle and lovely, pure and earnest-hearted,
She dwells among the just.

Through summer's long, bright days she lingered with us;
Then, with the falling leaf,
She faded from our sight, and heaven's garner
Received a ripened sheaf.

Love watched unceasingly beside her pillow;

They say that I love thee, that thou art to me
As the gods to the heathen, — a fair deity.
And they tell but the truth when they say thou art dear;
For, as blossoms so fair in the morn of the year,
Do I oft hail thy presence, — a star on my way;
And thy smile is as welcome as bright, sunny May.

Oh, yes, I do love thee! and welcome to me
Comes thy sweet, merry laugh, like a song o'er the sea.
Thou cheerest my pathway like music; thy smile
Doth oft from its sorrows my spirit beguile:

Might I lie at your feet some summer day,
Some summer day, when the sky is blue
And the air is soft,
Gazing aloft,
How should I dream that day away,
Being by you?

But no. No visions would come, my own,
For I could not dream with you so near
I should not dream,
But it would seem
That a perfect love is life alone,
In Heaven and here.

She sleeps, her fair cheek pillowed on some joy,
Some satisfaction pure, without alloy.

What shall awake her? whispered love so low
That the sweet words seem melting, soft and slow?

Nay! but the blood-red torch, the clangorous strife
Of armed men round her — Thus it is with life.

TO MISS

Come wed with me and we will write,
My Blue of Blues, from morn till night,
Chased from our classic souls shall be
All thoughts of vulgar progeny;
And thou shalt walk through smiling rows
Of chubby duodecimos,
While I, to match thy products nearly,
Shall lie-in of a quarto yearly.
'T is true, even books entail some trouble;
But live productions give one double.

Correcting children is such bother, —
While printers devils correct the other.
Just think, my own Malthusian dear,

A BALLAD .

Come , play me that simple air again,
I used so to love, in life's young day,
And bring, if thou canst, the dreams that then
Were wakened by that sweet lay,
The tender gloom its strain
Shed o'er the heart and brow,
Grief's shadow without its pain —

At night, when all is still around,
How sweet to hear the distant sound
Of footstep, coming soft and light!
What pleasure in the anxious beat,
With which the bosom flies to meet
That foot that comes so soft at night!

And then, at night, how sweet to say
" 'T is late, my love! " and chide delay,
Tho' still the western clouds are bright;
Oh! happy, too, the silent press,
The eloquence of mute caress,
With those we love exchanged at night!

Pure as the mantle, which, o'er him who stood
By Jordan's stream, descended from the sky,
Is that remembrance which the wise and good
Leave in the hearts that love them, when they die.

So pure, so precious shall the memory be,
Bequeathed, in dying, to our souls by thee —
So shall the love we bore thee, cherisht warm
Within our souls thro' grief and pain and strife,
Be, like Elisha's cruse, a holy charm,
Wherewith to " heal the waters " of this life!

Love had a fever — ne'er could close
His little eyes till day was breaking;
And wild and strange enough, Heaven knows,
The things he raved about while waking.

To let him pine so were a sin; —
One to whom all the world's a debtor —
So Doctor Hymen was called in,
And Love that night slept rather better.

Next day the case gave further hope yet,
Tho' still some ugly fever latent; —
" Dose, as before " — a gentle opiate,
For which old Hymen has a patent.

After a month of daily call,

Unbind thee, love, unbind thee, love,
From those dark ties unbind thee;
Tho' fairest hand the chain hath wove,
Too long its links have twined thee.
Away from earth! — thy wings were made
In yon mid-sky to hover,
With earth beneath their dove-like shade,
And heaven all radiant over.

Awake thee, boy, awake thee, boy,
Too long thy soul is sleeping;
And thou mayst from this minute's joy
Wake to eternal weeping.
Oh, think, this world is not for thee;
Tho' hard its links to sever;