love poems

My Lady mine, I send
These sighs in joy to thee
Though, loving till the end,
There were no hope for me
That I should speak my love;
And I have loved indeed,
Though, having fearful heed,
It was not spoken of.

Thou art so high and great
That whom I love I fear;
Which thing to circumstate
I have no messenger:
Wherefore to Love I pray,
On whom each lover cries,
That these my tears and sighs
Find unto thee a way.

Well have I wished, when I
At heart with sighs have ach'd,

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;

My mother she's so good to me,
Ef I was good as I could be,
I couldn't be as good — no, sir! —
Can't any boy be good as her!

She loves me when I'm glad er sad;
She loves me when I'm good er bad;
An', what's a funniest thing, she says
She loves me when she punishes.

I don't like her to punish me. —
That don't hurt, — but it hurts to see
Her cryin'. — Nen I cry; an' nen
We both cry an' be good again.

She loves me when she cuts an' sews
My little cloak an' Sund'y clothes;

1

My mother called me to her deathbed side, these words she said to me:
“If your don't mend your rovin' ways, they'll put you in the penitentiary,
They'll put you in the penitentiary, poor boy, they'll put you in the penitentiary,
If you don't mend your rovin' ways, they'll put you in the penitentiary.”

2

I sat me down to play coon can, could scarcely read my hand,
A thinkin' about the woman I loved, ran away with another man.
Ran away with another man, poor boy, ran away with another man.

VERSE

I guess we haven't got a sense
Of responsibility,
Our young romance is so intense
We're close to imbecility.
Tick, tock! Cuckoo!

REFRAIN

Here we are,
Out of cigarettes,
Holding hands and yawning,
Look how late it gets.
Two sleepy people, by dawn's early light,
And too much in love to say " Good night. "
Here we are,
In the cozy chair,
Picking on a wishbone
From the Frigidaire,
Two sleepy people, with nothing to say
And too much in love to break away.

XXXVI

My love took scorn my service to retain
Wherein me thought she used cruelty
Since with goodwill I lost my liberty
To follow her which causeth all my pain.
Might never care cause me for to refrain,
But only this which is extremity,
Giving me naught, alas, not to agree
That, as I was, her man I might remain.
But since that thus ye list to order me
That would have been your servant true and fast,
Displease thee not my doting days be past
And with my loss to live I must agree.

My love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high;

It was begotten by despair
Upon impossibility.

Magnanimous despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble hope could ne'er have flown,
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed,
But fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.

For fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close;
Their union would her ruin be,

my love
thy hair is one kingdom
the king whereof is darkness
thy forehead is a flight of flowers

thy head is a quick forest
filled with sleeping birds
thy breasts are swarms of white bees
upon the bough of thy body
thy body to me is April
in whose armpits is the approach of spring

thy thighs are white horses yoked to a chariot
of kings
they are the striking of a good minstrel
between them is always a pleasant song.

my love
thy head is a casket
of the cool jewel of thy mind

My lord has great shoulders
though he now eats rice-pap in prison.

And I, outside his prison,
grow sallow as gold
for want of him.
When he enters the battlefield
and takes on those warriors
who brag at the festivals
in the great resounding city,
he is the swell and ebb of the sea
in the harbor
that terrifies sellers of salt.

My lefe is faren in a lond--
Alas! why is she so?
And I am so sore bound
I may nat com her to.
She hath my hert in hold,
Where-ever she ride or go,
With trew love a thousandfold.