love poems

Even on spring days you work the fields and tire yourself, my love.
With no wife like young grass you work the fields and tire yourself.

With a basket, a lovely basket,
with a trowel, a lovely trowel,
you pick herbs on this hill, child,
I ask you about your house, tell me.
This sky-filling land of Yamato,
I am the one who rules it all,
seated, I govern it all.
I will tell you
my house and my name.

I longed to love a full-boughed beech
And be as high as he:
I stretched an arm within his reach,
And signalled unity.
But with his drip he forced a breach,
And tried to poison me.

I gave the grasp of partnership
To one of other race--
A plane: he barked him strip by strip
From upper bough to base;
And me therewith; for gone my grip,
My arms could not enlace.

In new affection next I strove
To coll an ash I saw,
And he in trust received my love;
Till with my soft green claw

At morn I plucked a rose and gave it Thee,
A rose of joy and happy love and peace,
A rose with scarce a thorn:
But in the chillness of a second morn
My rose bush drooped, and all its gay increase
Was but one thorn that wounded me.

I plucked the thorn and offered it to Thee;
And for my thorn Thou gavest love and peace,
Not joy this mortal morn:
If Thou hast given much treasure for a thorn,
Wilt Thou not give me for my rose increase
Of gladness, and all sweets to me?

God doth embrace the good with love; & gaines
The good by mercy, as the bad by paines.

Fire that must flame is with apt fuell fed,
Flowers that wil thrive in sunny soyle are bred;
How can a hart feele heate that no hope findes?
Or can hee love on whom no comfort shines?

Fayre, I confesse there's pleasure in your sight:
Sweet, you have powre, I grant, of all delight:
But what is all to mee, if I have none?
Churle that you are, t' injoy such wealth alone.

Prayers move the heav'ns, but finde no grace with you;
Yet in your lookes a heavenly forme I view:
Then will I pray againe, hoping to finde,

When first my old, old love I knew,
My bosom welled with joy;
My riches at her feet I threw;
I was a love-sick boy!
No terms seemed too extravagant
Upon her to employ—
I used to mope, and sigh, and pant,
Just like a love-sick boy!

But joy incessant palls the sense;
And love unchanged will cloy,
And she became a bore intense
Unto her love-sick boy?
With fitful glimmer burnt my flame,
And I grew cold and coy,
At last, one morning, I became
Another's love-sick boy!

Yet not this color, not these lovely forms,
That chiefly should engross and ask thy praise;
Rather the revelation of abiding grace
Continuous, as the morning's voice
Lifts up the chant of universal faith,
Perpetual newness and the health in things.
This, is the startling theme, the lovely birth
Each morn of a new day, so wholly new,
So absolutely penetrated by itself,
The fresh, the fair, the ever-living grace,—
The tender joy, that still forever clothes
This orb of Beauty, this, of bliss the abode!

As one upon no mission bent
I came—no sacerdotal cause
Save just to live by nature's laws,
And her direct arbitrament.
To hold in awe; to please myself,
And thus the world a service do;
To drive devoid the greed of pelf,
The product of my labor mine.
To crouch to none, to crave no sway,
But inward from the leagues of blue
To drink the gladness of the lovely day,
To dwell in peace, and bear no fruitless pain.

But I—who love the wood and stream,
The winning voice of Day and Night,

Three ladies went a-walking
Among the garden bowers;
They said: “Would we had with us
Those lovers brave of ours.”
A little bird, all silent,
Listened among the flowers.

“What will you pay me, ladies,
To be ambassador?”
The first said: “I will pay thee
This purse of gold, and more.”

“I will pay,” said the second,
“A nosegay sweet, like this.”
And the third, who was the fairest:
“I will pay a true-love kiss.”

The little bird went flying
Past tower and roof and tree,