love poems

"Dear brother, dearest friend, when I am dead,
And you shall see no more this face of mine,
Let nothing but red roses be the sign
Of the white life I lost for him," she said;
"No, do not curse him, -- pity him instead;
Forgive him! -- forgive me! . . God's anodyne
For human hate is pity; and the wine
That makes men wise, forgiveness. I have read
Love's message in love's murder, and I die."
And so they laid her just where she would lie, --
Under red roses. Red they bloomed and fell;
But when flushed autumn and the snows went by,

Deep, Love, yea, very deep.
And in the dark exiled,
I have no sense of light but still to creep
And know the breast, but not the eyes. Thy child
Saw ne'er his mother near, nor if she smiled;
But only feels her weep.

Yet clouds and branches green
There be aloft, somewhere,
And winds, and angel birds that build between,
As I believe--and I will not despair;
For faith is evidence of things not seen.
Love! if I could be there!

I will be patient, dear.
Perchance some part of me

I


He. Aglai-a! Aglai-a!
Sweet, awaken and be glad.
She. Who is this that calls Aglaia?
Is it thou, my dearest lad?
He. 'Tis Arion, 'tis Arion,
Who calls thee from sleep--
From slumber who bids thee
To follow and number
His kids and his sheep.
She. Nay, leave to entreat me!
If mother should spy on
Us twain, she would beat me.
He. Then come, my love, come!
And hide with Arion
Where green woods are dumb!

She. Ar-i-on! Ar-i-on!

Small is my secret--let it pass--
Small in your life the share I had,
Who sat beside you in the class,
Awed by the bright superior lad:
Whom yet with hot and eager face
I prompted when he missed his place.

For you the call came swift and soon:
But sometimes in your holidays
You meet me trudging home at noon
To dinner through the dusty ways,
And recognized, and with a nod
Passed on, but never guessed--thank God!

Truly our ways were separate.
I bent myself to hoe and drill,

O, subtle Love! thy peace is war,
It wounds and kills without a scar,
It works unknown to any sense,
Like the decrees of Providence,
And with strange silence shoots me through,
The fire of Love doth fell like snow.
Hath she no quiver, but my heart?
Must all her arrows hit that part?
Beauties like heav'n their gifts should deal
Not to destroy us, but to heal.
Strange art of Love! that can make sound,
And yet exasperates the wound:
That look she lent to ease my heart,
Hath pierc'd it, and improv'd the smart.

Mark, when the evening's cooler wings
Fan the afflicted air, how the faint sun,
Leaving undone,
What he begun,
Those spurious flames suck'd up from slime and earth
To their first, low birth,
Resigns, and brings.

They shoot their tinsel beams and vanities,
Threading with those false fires their way;
But as you stay
And see them stray,
You lose the flaming track, and subtly they
Languish away,

Ask, lover, ere thou diest; let one poor breath
Steal from thy lips, to tell her of thy death;
Doating idolater! can silence bring
Thy saint propitious? or will Cupid fling
One arrow for thy paleness? leave to try
This silent courtship of a sickly eye.
Witty to tyranny, she too well knows
This but the incense of thy private vows,
That breaks forth at thine eyes, and doth betray
The sacrifice thy wounded heart would pay;
Ask her, fool, ask her; if words cannot move,
The language of thy tears may make her love.

The Sigh.

Nimble sigh, on thy warm wings,
Take this message and depart;
Tell Amoret, that smiles and sings,
At what thy airy voyage brings,
That thou cam'st lately from my heart.

Tell my lovely foe that I
Have no more such spies to send,
But one or two that I intend,
Some few minutes ere I die,
To her white bosom to commend.

Then whisper by that holy spring,
Where for her sake I would have died,
Whilst those water-nymphs did bring

We travelled in the print of olden wars;
Yet all the land was green;
And love we found, and peace,
Where fire and war had been.

They pass and smile, the children of the sword--
No more the sword they wield;
And O, how deep the corn
Along the battlefield!

I am a kind of farthing dip,
Unfriendly to the nose and eyes;
A blue-behinded ape, I skip
Upon the trees of Paradise.

At mankind's feast, I take my place
In solemn, sanctimonious state,
And have the air of saying grace
While I defile the dinner-plate.

I am "the smiler with the knife,"
The battener upon garbage, I--
Dear Heaven, with such a rancid life
Were it not better far to die?

Yet still, about the human pale,
I love to scamper, love to race,
To swing by my irreverent tail