love poems

Ere I lose myself in the vastness and drowse myself with the peace,
While I gaze on the light and the beauty afar from the dim homes of men,
May I still feel the heart-pang and pity, love-ties that I would not release;
May the voices of sorrow appealing call me back to their succour again.

Ere I storm with the tempest of power the thrones and dominions of old,
Ere the ancient enchantment allure me to roam through the star-misty skies,
I would go forth as one who has reaped well what harvest the earth may unfold;

Sweet names, the rosary of my evening prayer,
Told on my lips like kisses of good-night
To friends who go a little from my sight,
And some through distant years shine clear and fair!—
So this dear burden that I daily bear
Mighty God taketh, and doth loose me quite;
And soft I sink in slumbers pure and light
With thoughts of human love and heavenly care;
But when I mark how into shadow slips
My manhood's prime, and weep fast-passing friends,
And heaven's riches making poor my lips,
And think how in the dust love's labor ends,

The broad magnolia's blooms are white;
Her blooms are large, as if the moon
Had lost her way some lazy night,
And lodged here till the afternoon.

Oh, vast white blossoms breathing love!
White bosom of my lady dead,
In your white heaven overhead
I look, and learn to look above.

He longs
He strokes with words the place of longing
keeps long vigils on the peaks of days that collapse in cold sand
Saida over Saida
and sea that tumbles into sea
I remember having loved. . . . . .

I loved until I became love
And who saw my soul over the trees of the place
And who saw my voice across the silence opposite the city?
In silence everything happens
the rose of the volcano
the wind's glory
the talk of the ocean
the neighing of the ages
songs
moans …

They do not hear
because

My heart is not mine any longer,
I confess it to you, dearest friends;
I love, and no love could be stronger,
For my loved One the whole world transcends—
My heart is not mine any longer.

'Tis useless to dwell on her beauty,
She has utterly conquered my heart;
To praise her I feel is my duty,
But her fairness excels all my art—
'Tis useless to dwell on her beauty.

I cannot endure life without her,
Nor the length of the night and the day;
'Tis life to be thinking about her,

A MUSTERED host of glances bright,
A sweet bouquet of smiles,
A crucible of melting words
Bewitched me with their wiles!

I wished to live retired, to love
The flowers and bosky glades,
The blue sky's lights, the dew of morn,
The evening's mists and shades;

To scan my destiny's dark page,
In thought my hours employ,
And dwell in meditation deep
And visionary joy.

Then near me stirred a breath that seemed
A waft of Eden's air,
The rustle of a maiden's robe,
A tress of shining hair.

O cool in the summer is salad,
?And warm in the winter is love;
And a poet shall sing you a ballad
?Delicious thereon and thereof.
A singer am I, if no sinner,
?My muse has a marvellous wing,
And I willingly worship at dinner
The Sirens of Spring.
Take endive—like love it is bitter,
?Take beet—for like love it is red;
Crisp leaf of the lettuce shall glitter,
?And cress from the rivulet's bed;
Anchovies, foam-born, like the lady
?Whose beauty has maddened this bard;
And olives, from groves that are shady;

Dear child, thou know'st, I blame not thee;
Thou too, I know, hast shared the smart.
Neither did wrong; 'twas only she,
Nature, that moulded us apart.

But not to have sinned, in Nature's eyes
I find a brittle plea to trust:
She punishes the just unwise
More hardly than the wise unjust.

She placed our souls, like Heaven's lone spheres,
In separate paths, no power can move:
O truth too heart-breaking for tears!
Not even Love, not even Love!

You and I have found the secret way,
None can bar our love or say us nay:
All the world may stare and never know
You and I are twined together so.

You and I for all his vaunted width
Know the giant Space is but a myth;
Over miles and miles of pure deceit
You and I have found our lips can meet.

You and I have laughed the leagues apart
In the soft delight of heart to heart.
If there's a gulf to meet or limit set,
You and I have never found it yet.

You and I have trod the backward way

By our first strange and fatal interview,
By all desires which thereof did ensue,
By our long starving hopes, by that remorse
Which my words' masculine persuasive force
Begot in thee, and by the memory
Of hurts, which spies and rivals threatened me,
I calmly beg: but by thy father's wrath,
By all pains, which want and divorcement hath,

I conjure thee, and all the oaths which I
And thou have sworn to seal joint constancy,
Here I unswear, and overswear them thus,
Thou shalt not love by ways so dangerous.