love poems

L OVE'S breath is in the vernal breeze
That fans the cheek on twilight eves;
Love's breath exhales from out the rose,
When morn unfolds its crimson leaves;
Love's breath is in the murmuring sound
That o'er the bubbling fountain rings;
Love's breath is in the little song
The little bird to Nature sings!

Love's breath from yonder starry worlds
Comes down in ether pure and bright;
Love's breath is in the winter's storm,
And in the summer breeze of night.
Warm looks of love from Nature's face

Open thy lattice love Listen to me!
The cool balmy breeze is abroad on the sea!
The moon like a queen, roams her realms of blue,
And the stars keep their vigils in heaven for you
Ere morn's gushing light tips the hills with its ray,
Away o'er the waters away and away!
Then open thy lattice, love listen to me!
While the moon's in the sky and the breeze on the sea!

—Open thy lattice, love listen to me!
In the voyage of life, love our pilot will be!
—He will sit at the helm wherever we rove,

In the full river
that plays with the sands
play the women in bright leaf-skirts

and our man of the old cane town
plays partner in their love play:
he belongs to our town,
yet he does not.

See the Halcyon fishing
O'er the glassy stream
All the air's transparent,
What a sunny gleam!
This is lovely weather,
'Tis a Halcyon day,
Sure a storm's impending
Let us haste away.

In this high room, my room of quiet space,
Sun-yellow softened for my happiness,
I learn of you, Wang Wei, and of your loves;
Your rhythmic fisher sweet with solitude
Beneath a willow by the river stream;
Your agéd plum tree bearing lonely bloom
Beside the torrent's thunder; misty buds
Among your saplings; delicate-leaved bamboo.
My room is sweet because of you, Wang Wei,
Your tranquil and creative-fingered love
So many mounds of mournful years ago
In that cool valley where the colors lived.

Some fall in love with voices, some with eyes,
Some men are linked together by a tear;
Others by smiles; many who cannot tell
What time the spirit passed who left the spell.
It comes to us among the winds that rise
Scattering their gifts on all things far and near.
The fields of unripe corn, the mountain lake,
And the great-hearted sea—all objects take
Their glory and their witchery from winds:
All save the few black pools the woodman finds
Far in the depths of some unsunny place,
Which stand, albeit the happy winds are out

At thy voice my heart
Wakes as a bird
Wakes in the night
With sudden rapture stirred.

At thy look my soul
Soars as a flame
Soars from the dark
Toward heaven, whence it came.

At thy love my life
Lifts from the clod
As a lily lifts
From its dark sleep toward God.

He lies in the soft earth under the grass,
Where they who love him often pass.
And his grave is under a tall young lime,
In whose boughs the pale green hop-flowers climb;
But his spirit—where does his spirit rest?
It was God who made him—God knows best.

I have a garden in the city's grime
Where secretly my heart keeps summer-time;

Where blow such airs of rapture on my eyes
As those blest dreamers know in Paradise,

Who after lives of longing come at last
Where anguish of vain love is overpast.

When the broad noon lies shadeless on the street,
And traffic roars, and toilers faint with heat,

Where men forget that ever woods were green,
The wonders of my garden are not seen.

Only at night the magic doors disclose
Its labyrinths of lavender and rose;

When from the rose mist of creation grew
God's patient waiting in your wide-set eyes,
The morning stars, and all the host that flies
On wings of love, paused at the wondrous blue
With which the Master, mindful of the hue,
Stained first the crystal dome of summer skies;
And afterward the violet that vies
With amethyst, before He fashioned you.

And I have trembled with those ancient stars,
My heart has known the flame-winged seraphs' song;
For no indifferent, dreamy eyelid bars
Me from the blue, nor veils with lashes long