love poems

Beloved ! your hair was golden
As tender tints of sunrise,
As corn beside the River
In softly varying hues.
I loved you for your slightness,
Your melancholy sweetness,
Your changeful eyes, that promised
What your lips would still refuse.

You came to me, and loved me,
Were mine upon the River,
The azure water saw us
And the blue transparent sky;
The Lotus flowers knew it,
Our happiness together,
While life was only River,
Only love, and you and I.

Love wakened on the River,

You are all that is lovely and light,
Aziza whom I adore,
And, waking, after the night,
I am weary with dreams of you.
Every nerve in my heart is tense and sore
As I rise to another morning apart from you.

I dream of your luminous eyes,
Aziza whom I adore!
Of the ruffled silk of your hair,
I dream, and the dreams are lies.
But I love them, knowing no more
Will ever be mine of you
Aziza, my life's despair.

I would burn for a thousand days,
Aziza whom I adore,

Since , Oh, Beloved, you are not even faithful
To me, who loved you so, for one short night,
For one brief space of darkness, though my absence
Did but endure until the dawning light;

Since all your beauty — which was mine — you squandered
On that which now lies dead across your door;
See here this knife, made keen and bright to kill you.
You shall not see the sun rise any more.

Lie still! Lie still! In all the empty village

Only in August my heart was aflame,
Catching the scent of your Wind-stirred hair,
Now, though you spread it to soften my sleep
Through the night, I should hardly care.

Only last August I drank that water
Because it had chanced to cool your hands;
When love is over, how little of love
Even the lover understands!

Oh , Silver Stars that shine on what I love,
Touch the soft hair and sparkle in the eyes, —
Send, from your calm serenity above,
Sleep to whom, sleepless, here, despairing lies.

Broken, forlorn, upon the Desert sand
That sucks these tears, and utterly abased,
Looking across the lonely, level land,
With thoughts more desolate than any waste.

Planets that shine on what I so adore,
Now thrown, the hour is late, in careless rest,
Protect that sleep, which I may watch no more,

Oh Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace:
Where there is hatred, may I bring love,
Where there is offence, may I bring forgiveness,
Where there is discord, may I bring union,
Where there is doubt, may I bring the faith,
Where there is error, may I bring the truth,
Where there is despair, may I bring hope,
Where there is sadness, may I bring joy,
Where there is darkness, may I bring light.

Grant, oh Master, that I may seek not so much
to be comforted, as to comfort,
to be understood, as to understand,

Men talke of Loue that know not what it is:
For could we know what Loue may be indeede,
We would not haue our mindes so led amisse
With idle toies, that wanton humours feede;
But in the rules of higher reason read
What Loue may be, so from the world conceal'd:
Yet all too plainely to the world reueal'd.

Some one doth faine Loue is a blinded God:
His blindnesse him more halfe a diuell showes:
For Loue with blindnesse neuer made abode,
Which all the power of Wit and Reason knowes:

A WAKE , my soule out of the sleepe of sinne.
And shake off slouth the subiect of thy shame;
Search out the way how best thou mayst beginne
To holy worke thine humble will to frame:
Then proue not weary of a little paine,
When fleshe's griefe will breed the spirit's gaine.

Confesse thyselfe vnworthy of the sence
To learne the least of the supernall Will;
Beseech the heauens in strength of their defence
To saue and keepe thee from infernall ill:
Then fall to worke, that all the world may see

F AIRE in a plot of earthly paradise,
Vpon a hill, the Muses made a Maze:
In midst whereof within a Phœnix eies,
There sits a grace that hath the world at gase:
Which Phœnix is but name vnto a nature
That shows the world hath scarcely such a creature:

This true loues saint, by worthy beauty crowned.
Did seeme to wish but not expresse her will:
When straunge desires were in deuises drowned
To finde out wonders farthest from her wil:
The worlde came in, with presents many a one
But yet alas, her loue could like of none.

A BLUSH-ROSE lay in the summer;
There were golden lights in the sky,
And a woman saw the blossom
As she stood with her lover nigh.

A band in the flowering distance
Play'd a dreamy Italian air,
Like a memory changed to music,
And it drifted everywhere.

'Twas an exiled love of its Southland,
That air, and its delicate wails
Were only the wandering echoes
Of the songs of nightingales.

" I love you, " he tenderly whisper'd;
" I love you, " she answer'd as low: