love poems

I DO not ask it thee! That is not love
Which waits to be entreated. Love is free
As God's own life, and of itself doth move.
Should I say, Love me? Rather let me prove
Myself to be love-worthy: then let be!

And yet what wretched shams our sad eyes see!—
“I love my Love because my Love loves me;”—
Oh, pitiful! Hast thou no gauge above
Another's thought by which to rate thine own?
No worthier trust, no surer corner-stone
To build thy temple of sweet hopes upon?
God help thee at thy need and give thee strength

O love, thy hair! thy locks of night and musk!
The very wind therein doth lose his way,
While in the perfumed darkness he would stray;
And my heart, too, is lost in scented dusk.

Thy crescent brows irradiate the night;
Love, of thy lips and tresses give thou me—
Thy breast is like a restless, heaving sea;
Thine eyes are stars of sorrow and delight.

Yet grieve not that I grieve, Soul of the Sea—
What is my heart that thou shouldst comfort it
With wine or song, with smile or dance or wit?

I'd not speak nor
Utter the pulse
That lowly travels
Blindly its course.

Sad, and many years …
Can soul, the instinct,
With love and fears,
Prop its burdened link?

Let's say “Good-bye”
Nor wait Love's latest breath
Poised now so lightly on the wing of Death,
While yet within our eyes one fervent gleam
Remains to hallow this, a passing dream:
Yes, yes “Good-bye,”
For it is best to part
While Love's low light still burns
Within the heart!

The pale blue sky gleams through the opening leaves,
The shadows play across the ground and air,
The yellow sunlight round leaf-rims retrieves
Its vanquished splendor where the foliage fair
Shuts out the grass from its fierce pulse and care.

I hear the silence from my window seat,
And feel the summer entering my veins,
And know with what strange joys the hour-hearts beat,
The fervorous hours that dance the fleeting plains
Where Love has birth and sweetest Joy remains.

I see across the way the maid I love,

She whom I loved, who loves me now no more,
Hath two conflicting natures in her soul:
And one of these she gave me; gave it whole,
And with an innocent emphasis did pour
That self of hers, full-brimm'd and running o'er,
Into the heart I offer'd her—a bowl
Homely perhaps, yet neither slight nor foul,
And apt to hold the treasure that it bore.

But then, her other self arose and cried
Against my gift, against her plenitude
Of sweet acceptance; and in alter'd mood
Sudden she flung that lifted bowl aside:

And had you loved me then, my dear,
And had you loved me there,
When still the sun was in the east
And hope was in the air,—
When all the birds sang to the dawn
And I but sang to you,—
Oh, had you loved me then, my dear,
And had you then been true!

But ah! the day wore on, my dear,
And when the noon grew hot
The drowsy birds forgot to sing,
And you and I forgot
To talk of love, or live for faith,
Or build ourselves a nest;
And now our hearts are shelterless,
Our sun is in the west.

O Temple Bell of Mii!
Thy soothing sound
Now hides behind the haze
Those seven lovely views.

Not thine but ours this day shall prove.
All others in the year that be
Thou makest thine by deeds of love:
This day is ours—to give to thee.

O Study! while thy lovers raise
Thy name with all the pow'r of praise,
Frown not, thou nymph with piercing mind!
If in this bosom thou should'st find
That all thy deep, thy brilliant, lore,
Which charm'd it once, now charms no more:
Frown not, if, on thy classic line,
One strange, uncall'd-for, tear should shine;
Frown not, if, when a smile should start,
A sigh should heave an aching heart:
If Mem'ry, roving far away,
Should an unmeaning homage pay,
Should ask thee for thy golden fruit,