love poems

Once, at night, in the manor wood
My Love and I long silent stood,
Amazed that any heavens could
Decree to part us, bitterly repining.
My Love, in aimless love and grief,
Reached forth and drew aside a leaf
That just above us played the thief
And stole our starlight that for us was shining.

A star that had remarked her pain
Shone straightway down that leafy lane,
And wrought his image, mirror-plain,
Within a tear that on her lash hung gleaming.
"Thus Time," I cried, "is but a tear

Look where a three-point star shall weave his beam
Into the slumb'rous tissue of some stream,
Till his bright self o'er his bright copy seem
Fulfillment dropping on a come-true dream;
So in this night of art thy soul doth show
Her excellent double in the steadfast flow
Of wishing love that through men's hearts doth go:
At once thou shin'st above and shin'st below.
E'en when thou strivest there within Art's sky
(Each star must o'er a strenuous orbit fly),
Full calm thine image in our love doth lie,
A Motion glassed in a Tranquillity.

As Love will carve dear names upon a tree,
Symbol of gravure on his heart to be,

So thought I thine with loving text to set
In the growth and substance of my canzonet;

But, writing it, my tears begin to fall --
This wild-rose stem for thy large name's too small!

Nay, still my trembling hands are fain, are fain
Cut the good letters though they lap again;

Perchance such folk as mark the blur and stain
Will say, `It was the beating of the rain;'

Or, haply these o'er-woundings of the stem

It matters not what be thy lot,
So Love doth guide;
For storm or shine, pure peace is thine,
Whate'er betide.

And of these stones, or tyrants' thrones,
God able is
To raise up seed--in thought and deed--
To faithful His.

Aye, darkling sense, arise, go hence!
Our God is good.
False fears are foes--truth tatters those,
When understood.

Love looseth thee, and lifteth me,
Ayont hate's thrall:
There Life is light, and wisdom might,
And God is All.

The laying of the corner-stone of The Mother Church.


Laus Deo, it is done!
Rolled away from loving heart
Is a stone.
Lifted higher, we depart,
Having one.

Laus Deo,--on this rock
(Heaven chiseled squarely good)
Stands His church,--
God is Love, and understood
By His flock.

Laus Deo, night star-lit
Slumbers not in God's embrace;
Be awake;
Like this stone, be in thy place:
Stand, not sit.

Grave, silent, steadfast stone,
Dirge and song and shoutings low

Father-Mother good, lovingly
Thee I seek,--
Patient, meek,
In the way Thou hast,--
Be it slow or fast,
Up to Thee.

Mother's New Year Gift to the Little Children

Father-Mother God,
Loving me,--
Guard me when I sleep;
Guide my little feet
Up to Thee.

The flowers of June
The gates of memory unbar:
The flowers of June
Such old-time harmonies retune,
I fain would keep the gates ajar,--
So full of sweet enchantment are
The flowers of June.

--James T. White.

Who loves not June
Is out of tune
With love and God;
The rose his rival reigns,
The stars reject his pains,
His home the clod!

And yet I trow,
When sweet rondeau
Doth play a part,
The curtain drops on June;
Veiled is the modest moon--
Hushed is the heart.

Come, in the minstrel's lay;
When two hearts meet,
And true hearts greet,
And all is morn and May.

Come Thou! and now, anew,
To thought and deed
Give sober speed,
Thy will to know, and do.

Stay! till the storms are o'er--
The cold blasts done,
The reign of heaven begun,
And Love, the evermore.

Be patient, waiting heart:
Light, Love divine
Is here, and thine;
You therefore cannot part.

"The seasons come and go:
Love, like the sea,
Rolls on with thee,--

O for thy wings, sweet bird!
And soul of melody by being blest--
Like thee, my voice had stirred
Some dear remembrance in a weary breast.

But whither wouldst thou rove,
Bird of the airy wing, and fold thy plumes?
In what dark leafy grove
Wouldst chant thy vespers 'mid rich glooms?

Or sing thy love-lorn note--
In deeper solitude, where nymph or saint
Has wooed some mystic spot,
Divinely desolate the shrine to paint?

Yet wherefore ask thy doom?
Blessed compared with me thou art--