love poems

I think true love is never blind,
—But rather brings an added light,
An inner vision quick to find
—The beauties hid from common sight.

No soul can ever clearly see
—Another's highest, noblest part;
Save through the sweet philosophy
—And loving wisdom of the heart.

Your unanointed eyes shall fall
—On him who fills my world with light;
You do not see my friend at all;
—You see what hides him from your sight.

I see the feet that fain would climb;
—You but the steps that turn astray;

Who does not love true poetry,
He lacks a bosom friend
—To walk with him
—And talk with him,
And all his steps attend.

Who does not love true poetry—
Its rhythmic throb and swing
—The treat of it
—The sweet of it,
Along the paths of Spring:

Its joyous lilting melody
In every passing breeze,
—The deep of it,
—The sweep of it,
Through hours of toil or ease;

Its grandeur and sublimity—
Its majesty and might—
—The feel of it,
—The peal of it,

There is a place where lute and lyre are broken,
Where scrolls are torn and on a wild wind go,
Where tablets stand wiped naked for a token,
Where laurels wither and the daisies grow.

Lo: I too join the brotherhood of silence,
I am Love's trappist and you ask in vain,
For man through Love's gate, even as through Death's gate,
Goeth alone and comes not back again.

Yet here I pause, look back across the threshold,
Cry to my brethren, though the world be old,
Prophets and sages, questioners and doubters,

Love, we have looked on many shows
As over lands from sea to sea
Man with his Guardian Angel goes
His shining shadow more than he.

For us the Nile's first Kings lay covered
Under a mountain made with hands;
Or red bud bloomed and red bird hovered
Over the lost Red Indian lands.

Beside the sledge with fairy bells
The snow slid by like seas of foam;
Mirrored in many marble wells,
The sun sat regnant over Rome.

But not as distance, not as danger,
Not chance, and hardly even change,

For one
who doesn't come
I wait on,
wasting my time—
although
every night
the light of the stars,
at least,
visits
my bedchamber.

It whizzed and whistled along the blurred
And red-blent ranks; and it nicked the star
Of an epaulette, as it snarled the word—
War!

On it sped—and the lifted wrist
Of the ensign-bearer stung, and straight
Dropped at his side as the word was hissed—
Hate!

On went the missile—smoothed the blue
Of a jaunty cap and the curls thereof,
Cooing, soft as a dove might do—
Love!

Sang!—sang on!—sang hate—sang war—
Sang love, in sooth, till it needs must cease,
Hushed in the heart it was questing for.—

There is rapture in the thought,
From thy words of constance caught,
That the world contains no prize
Like the peace thy love supplies.

And I ponder o'er and o'er
Words of love forevermore,
As they come in tenderest tone
From thy heart—which is my own.

There is rapture in the thought,
From thy words of constance caught,
That the world contains no prize
Like the peace thy love supplies.

And I ponder o'er and o'er
Words of love forevermore,
As they come in tenderest tone

My mind was like a rugged soil that lay
With thick and cloudy darkness overspread,
Which chilling skies and iron seasons made
A sterile waste, with their ungentle sway.
Warmed in the light of Beauty's genial ray,
Its icy bands were loosed, its rigour fled,
And many a budding flow'ret reared its head,
As blooms the meadow in the prime of May.
Then came Love's gentle summer breath, to form
Flowers into fruit: and soon his fostering care
Had to a golden Autumn led the way;—
But ah! fell Jealousy's untimely storm

The look that thy sweet eyes on mine impress,
The pledge thy lips to mine convey,—the kiss,—
He who, like me, hath knowledge sure of this,
Can he in aught beside find happiness?

Removed from thee, friend-sever'd, in distress,
These thoughts I vainly struggle to dismiss:
They still return to that one hour of bliss,
The only one; then tears my grief confess.

But unawares the tear makes haste to dry:
He loves, methinks, e'en to these glades so still,—
And shalt not thou to distant lands extend?

O love, round as the watermelon,
do not use words sweet as the melon.
What you have said, this and that,
was all wrong, and you mocked me.
Enough, your empty talk
is hollow, like a preserved melon.