love poems

C HO W NDASH-CHÜN TO HER HUSBAND S SU-MA H SIANG-JU

You have taken our love and turned it into coins of silver.
You sell the love poems you wrote for me,
And with the price of them you buy many cups of wine,
I beg that you remain dumb,
That you write no more poems.
For the wine does us both an injury,
And the words of your heart
Have become the common speech of the Emperor's concubines.

As balmly as the breath of her you love
When deep between her breasts it comes to you.

Oh! May sits crowned with hawthorn-flower,
And is Love's month, they say;
And Love's the fruit that is ripened best
By ladies' eyes in May.

The lovely lass o' Inverness,
Nae joy nor pleasure can she see;
For e'en and morn she cries, Alas!
And ay the saut tear blin's her e'e:
Drumossie moor--Drumossie day--
A waefu' day it was to me!
For there I lost my father dear,
My father dear, and brethren three.
Their winding-sheet the bluidy clay,
Their graves are growing green to see:
And by them lies the dearest lad
That ever blest a woman's e'e!

Now wae to thee, thou cruel lord,
A bluidy man I trow thou be;
For mony a heart thou hast made sair

Deep in jumbled peaks, road to Yün-chü:
with others I tramp the blossoms, alone sorrowing for spring.
Beautiful spots have no fixed owner —
mountains belong mostly to people who love mountains.

Oh a lovely husband he was known, He loved his wife and
her alone; She reaped the harvest he had sown; She ate the meat; he
picked the bone. With mixed admirers ev'ry size, She smiled on each with
out disguise; This lovely husband closed his eyes Lest he might take her

CHORUS.

by surprise. Trot! Run! Wasn't he a handy hubby?
What Fun She could plot and plan! Not One
Other such a dandy hubby As this lovely man!

II

He answered at her least command:

Love is anterior to life,
Posterior to death,
Initial of creation, and
The exponent of breath.

I know that honour is
Because I follow it.
I know that love is
My heart does cry for it.

The sun? I dare not watch.
The stars? I was night-walker:
My friends in the high arch —
By Cranham or high Crickley.

They hurt like unsought kisses
From a love one dare
Not love — they are the water-hisses
From a cooled iron, red-bare.

Greatness? I have sailed
A boat in March daring . . .
And made a music, called
All March to my caring

Whether I made well
Or no — and Vermand knows

When I am covered with the dust of peace
And but the rain to moist my senseless clay,
Will there be one regret left in that ill ease

One sentimental fib of light and day —
A grief for hillside and the beaten trees?
Better to leave them, utterly to go away.

When every tiny pang of love is counterpiece
To shadowed woe of huge weight and the stay
For yet another torment ere release

Better to lie and be forgotten aye.
In death his rose-leaves never is a crease.
Rest squares reckonings love set awry.

New love, new love, where are you to lead me?
All along a narrow way that marks a crooked line.
How are you to slake me, and how are you to feed me?
With bitter yellow berries, and a sharp new wine.

New love, new love, shall I be forsaken?
One shall go a-wandering, and one of us must sigh.
Sweet it is to slumber, but how shall we awaken —
Whose will be the broken heart, when dawn comes by?