love poems

To sea those pirate craft again have gone,
Euphro and Thaïs and Boïdion.
Such harpies once as vexed King Diomede,
Stripping their victims naked in their greed.
Agis they've wrecked and Cleophon as well,
Antagoras of them a tale can tell.
Fly then Love's corsairs, fly these frigates bold,
More deadly they than Siren maids of old.

Pour out and pour and pour again,
And ‘Heliodora’ cry;
Let that dear word be our refrain,
As fast the wine cups fly.

Three spirits fair in her combined
Have come from heaven above,
And we in her one body find
Allurement, Grace, and Love.

The house was still, our lamp burned bright,
We two and none else nigh.
The lamp alone might know our troth
And night's sweet mystery.

He vowed to love me true: I vowed
Never to part again,
Thou, sacred Night, and thou, dear Lamp,
Were for us witness twain.

But now he says our vows are dead,
Swept by the changing tide;
This eve will see my own false love
Sleep by another's side.

An angel watched the world rejoicing:
The flowers sang in the morning light;
The blue sea sang its tender love-song
To golden-girdled stars at night.
All seemed so full of peace and gladness—
Till lo! a sudden ice-cold breath
Passed over hill and wave and meadow:
A stern voice whispered, “I am Death!”

Alas! in all that angel's dreaming
His loving heart had never dreamed
That only for one single moment
The fairy blossoms sang and gleamed.
He turned, and in despairing sadness

Leaving the bower of love, I seek the scene
Where thought's mailed servants in their stout array
Drive with straight swords the opposing clouds between:
Oh, at the dawning of a stormy day
That breaks tempestuous over wastes of grey
We are living—yet within high thought's domain
Are there not many gracious words to say?
What if the singer's robe with sanguine stain
Be wet, voice hoarsened from the battle-rain,
Shall he not find more rest and sweeter after
When to his heart thy white form he doth strain,

When youth is gone, and love is gone,
What lights the woodland way?
October's sunset, chill and wan;
The light of Autumn grey.
When youth is gone, and love is fled,
For us the world might well be dead!

When youth is gone,—as dead leaves go
Along the autumnal blast,—
Then first ourselves we seem to know
What all shall know at last;
The autumn weariness of life,
Past love and labour, zeal and strife.

When love is gone,—as blossoms fade,
Fade swiftly one by one,—
Our tired hearts tremble, as cold shade

Love is worth having: this we know and preach.
Though heartless, mindless, soulless, Nature be,
And all the voices of her wild white sea
Have nought of loving helpful God to teach;
Though, piercing far beyond the stars, we reach
More stars,—but no high heaven of sacred glee;
Though summer laughing in the dense green tree
Hath but a mocking restless helpless speech;
Though this be so, yet love is passing fair
And more than ever do we seek her face,
And seek her breast, and nestle in her hair,

Sweet bird! whose fate and mine agree,
As far as proud humanity,
The parellel will own;
O let our voice and hearts combine,
O let us, fellow-warblers join,
Our patroness to crown.

When heavy hung thy flagging wing,
When thou could'st neither move nor sing,
Of spirits void and rest;
A lovely nymph her aid apply'd,
She gave the bliss to heav'n allied,
And cur'd thee on her breast.

Me too the kind indulgent maid,
With gen'rous care and timely aid,
Restor'd to mirth and health;

Two mothers met one day at the door of a church.
One entered, full of radiant joy,
Proud and triumphant, carrying in her arms
Her little child for baptism.

The other, the unhappy one, leaving the threshold,
Also carried a child, but this poor mother
Brought it, dead, for burial.

A few more steps and the two met
She who bore in her happy arms
The child of her love;
The other, bathed in tears,
Who followed her dead baby.

Their eyes met. And at that moment
It was the happy mother from whose eyes

He who satire loves to sing,
On himself will satire bring.