love poems

Bride loved old words, and found her pleasure marred
On the first night, her expectations jarred,
And thirty inches short of being a yard.

Mutely the mole toils on;
The worm in silk cocoon
Stealthy as spider spins,
As glides the moon.
But listen where envy peers beneath half-closed lid;
Where peeping vanity lurks; where pride lies hid;
And peace beyond telling share with the light-stilled eye,
When only the image of the loved one's nigh.

Pollie is a simpleton;
" Look! " she cries, " that lovely swan! "
And, even before her transports cease,
Adds, " But I do love geese. "

When a lark wings up the sky,
She'll sit with lips ajar, then sigh —
For rapture; and the rapture o'er,
Whisper, " What's music for? "

Every lesson I allot,
As soon as learned is clean forgot.
" L-O-V ...? " I prompt. And she
Smiles, but I catch no " E. "

Thou canst not see him standing by —
Time — with a poppied hand
Stealing thy youth's simplicity,
Even as falls unceasingly
His waning sand.

He will pluck thy childish roses, as
Summer from her bush
Strips all the loveliness that was;
Even to the silence evening has
Thy laughter hush.

Thy locks too faint for earthly gold,
The meekness of thine eyes,
He will darken and dim, and to his fold

FAIR Amy of the terraced house,
Assist me to discover
Why you who would not hurt a mouse
Can torture so your lover.

You give your coffee to the cat,
You stroke the dog for coming,
And all your face grows kinder at
The little brown bee's humming.

But when he haunts your door . . . the town
Marks coming and marks going . . .
You seem to have stitched your eyelids down

I

Fast this Life of mine was dying,
Blind already and calm as death,
Snowflakes on her bosom lying
Scarcely heaving with her breath.

II

Love came by, and having known her
In a dream of fabled lands,
Gently stooped, and laid upon her
Mystic chrism of holy hands;

III

First printed in Blackwood's Magazine , May, 1847.
W E cannot live, except thus mutually
We alternate, aware or unaware,
The reflex act of life: and when we bear
Our virtue outward most impulsively,
Most full of invocation, and to be
Most instantly compellant, certes there
We live most life, whoever breathes most air
And counts his dying years by sun and sea.
But when a soul, by choice and conscience, doth
Throw out her full force on another soul,
The conscience and the concentration both

HYMN I

" The Lord Jesus, although gone to the Father, and we see Him no more, is still present with His Church; and in His heavenly glory expends upon her as intense a love, as in the agony of the garden, and the crucifixion of the tree. Those eyes that wept, still gaze upon her." — Recalled words of an extempore Discourse, preached at Sidmouth , 1833.

God , named Love, whose fount Thou art,
Thy crownless Church before Thee stands,
With too much hating in her heart,

" From fading things, fond men, lift your desire."
— Drummond .

Could ye be very blest in hearkening
Youth's often danced-to melodies —
Hearing it piped, the midnight darkening
Doth come to show the starry skies, —
To freshen garden-flowers, the rain? —
It is in vain, it is in vain!

Could ye be very blest in urging
A captive nation's strength to thunder
Out into foam, and with its surging
The Xerxean fetters break asunder?
The storm is cruel as the chain! —

BOOK I

I N Cupid's school whoe'er would take degree,
Must learn his rudiments, by reading me.
Seamen with sailing arts their vessels move;
Art guides the chariot; art instructs to love.
Of ships and chariots others know the rule;
But I am master in Love's mighty school.
Cupid indeed is obstinate and wild,
A stubborn god; but yet the god 's a child,
Easy to govern in his tender age,
Like fierce Achilles in his pupilage:
That hero, born for conquest, trembling stood