love poems

XII

Was I never yet of your love grieved
Nor never shall while that my life doth last.
But of hating myself that date is past,
And tears continual sore have me wearied.
I will not yet in my grave be buried
Nor on my tomb your name yfixed fast
As cruel cause that did the spirit soon haste
From th'unhappy bones by great sighs stirred.
Then if an heart of amorous faith and will
May content you without doing grief,
Please it you so to this to do relief.
If otherwise ye seek for to fulfil

Kind fostering mother, let thy favouring care
Turn from the youthful band the yielding fair;
With love of aged swains their breasts inspire;
Weak though their limbs, yet strong is their desire.

CLIII

From thought to thought, from hill to hill love doth me lead.
Clean contrary from restful life these common paths I tread.

OW ORLD ! somewhat I have to say to thee.
O sin-sick, heart-sick, soul-sick, love-sick World!
So ailing art thou, both in part and particle,
That solid truth thy stomach ill digests.
Yet, since thou art my mother, I will love thee,
And heedless of thy frowns, “will speak right on.”

That which belongs to all men is least prized;
The thing most common is least understood.
That which is deep and silent is divine;
And there is nought on earth so craved, so common,
So misunderstood, or so divine, as Love.

I send home your glove, my darling!
Darling! love and true!
Yester-eve left where you sat by me;
And my heart goes with it to you.

Goes with it all love and devotion,
To win sweet looks from your eyes,
Like the flower which, thirsting in Summer,
For the sweet rain at noon-day sighs.

I send it, yet fain would keep it,
For the little hand that, in mine,
Yester-eve so lovingly nestled,
When your kisses were sweeter than wine.

Come back soon!—I pine, my darling!
For the clasp of your hand again;

One forgets not the first dead he sorrowed over;
One forgets not the first kiss of the first lover.
Not the dust of ages could remembrance cover
How in Titian's golden kingdom first I strayed.

Oh, that Roman morning's azure, softly sifting
Through the gray, the while the rapt eye caught the rifting
Of the sun's rich fire where molten mists were drifting,
As one looks upon an opal gently swayed.

Ah! but in the palace there was sun more golden!
Art for once to Nature was no more beholden.

When I am old,
And sadly steal apart,
Into the dark and cold,
Friend of my heart!
Remember, if you can,
Not him who lingers, but that other man,
Who loved and sang, and had a beating heart,—
When I am old!

When I am old,
And all Love's ancient fire
Be tremulous and cold:
My soul's desire!
Remember, if you may,
Nothing of you and me but yesterday,
When heart on heart we bid the years conspire
To make us old.

When I am old,
And every star above
Be pitiless and cold:

As some great monarch in triumphal train
Holds in his thrall an hundred captive kings,
Guard thou the loves of all my vanished springs
To wait as handmaids on thy sweet disdain.
And thou shalt wear their tresses like bright rings,
For their defeat perpetuates thy reign!
With thy imperious girlhood vie in vain
The pallid hosts of all old poignant things.

Place on thy brow the mystic diadem
With women's faces cunningly embossed,
Whereon each memory glitters like a gem;
But mark that mine were regal loves that lost

Through the locust-husk
world do we pass twice over?
What am I doing,
sleeping all alone at night,
never meeting my young love?

‘Fear not, O maidens, shivering
As bunches of the dew-drenched leaves
In the calm moonlight . . . it is the cold sends quivering
My voice, a little nightingale that grieves.

Now Time beats not, and dead Love is forgotten . . .
The spirit too is dead and dank and rotten,

And I forget the moment when I ran
Between my lover and the sworded man—

Blinded with terror lest I lose his heart.
The sworded man dropped, and I saw depart

Love and my lover and my life . . . he fled