love poems

CCIX

I love, loved, and so doth she
And yet in love we suffer still.
The cause is strange, as seemeth me,
To love so well and want our will.

O deadly yea! O grievous smart!
Worse than refuse, unhappy gain!
In love whoever played this part
To love so well and live in pain?

Was ever hearts so well agreed
Since love was love, as I do trow,
That in their love so ill did speed
To love so well and live in woe?

This mourn we both and hath done long
With woeful plaint and careful voice.

Twilight down the west
Wanders once again;
With a gentler guest
Singing in her train.

Hearkens every breast,
Every heart and brain:
Peace, oh, peace is best!
Runs the sweet refrain.

So the world is blest,
Joy is not nor pain;
Love itself learns rest
Of the summer rain.

" I love, I love, and whom love ye? "
" I love a flowre of fresh beaute."
" I love another as well as ye."
" Than shall be proved here, anon,
If we three can agre in on."

" I love a flowre of swete odour. "
" Magerome gentil, or lavendour?
Columbine, goldes of swete flavour?"
" Nay! nay! let be:
Is non of them
That liketh me."

" There is a flowre whereso he be,
And shall not yet be named for me."
" Primeros, violet or fresh daisy?"
" He pass them all
In his degree,

I love all waves and lovely water in motion,
That wavering iris in comb of the blown spray:
Iris of tumbled nautilus in the wake's commotion,
Their spread sails dipped in a marmoreal way
Unquarried, wherein are greeny bubbles blowing
Plumes of faint spray, cool in the deep
And lucent seas, that pause not in their flowing
To lap the southern starlight while they sleep.
These I have seen, these I have loved and known:
I have seen Jupiter, that great star, swinging
Like a ship's lantern, silent and alone

I love all beauteous things,
I seek and adore them;
God hath no better praise,
And man in his hasty days
Is honoured for them.

I too will something make
And joy in the making;
Although tomorrow it seem
Like the empty words of a dream
Remembered on waking.

I kissed them in fancy as I came
Away in the morning glow:
I kissed them through the glass of her picture-frame:
She did not know.

I kissed them in love, in troth, in laughter,
When she knew all; long so!
That I should kiss them in a shroud thereafter
She did not know.

I KNOW my Love by his way of walking,
And I know my love by his way of talking,
And I know my love dressed in a suit of blue,
And if my Love leaves me, what will I do?
And still she cried, " I love him the best,
And a troubled mind, sure, can know no rest, "
And still she cried, " Bonny boys are few,
And if my Love leaves me, what will I do? "

There is a dance house in Mar'dyke,
And there my true love goes every night;
He takes a strange one upon his knee,
And don't you think, now, that vexes me?

1. I know a flower so fair and fine, So fragrant
2. This flower so fair and fine is love; God's hand with
and so cheering; With lifeblood clear as purest wine,
art it molded. Unseen on earth, but not above,
And leaflet fine, Like rose-leaves all appearing.
Is growth of love, Till fair it is unfolded.

3. Upon this earth but wild it grows;
Not so in new earth's Eden,
Where stream of life serenely flows;
It buds and blows,
Delightful fragrance breathing.

I knew when I said
I love you
that I was inventing a new alphabet
for a city where no one could read
that I was saying my poems
in an empty theater
and pouring my wine
for those who could not

I heard a linnet courting
His lady in the spring:
His mates were idly sporting,
Nor stayed to hear him sing
His song of love.--
I fear my speech distorting
His tender love.

The phrases of his pleading
Were full of young delight;

And she that gave him heeding
Interpreted aright
His gay, sweet notes,--
So sadly marred in the reading,--
His tender notes.

And when he ceased, the hearer
Awaited the refrain,
Till swiftly perching nearer
He sang his song again,