love poems

When night's dark mantle veil'd the seas,
And nature's self was hush'd to sleep,—
When gently blew the midnight breeze,
Louisa sought the boundless deep.
On the lone beach, in wild despair,
She sat recluse from soft repose,
Her artless sorrows rent the air,
So sad were fair Louisa's woes.

Three years she nurs'd the pleasing thought
Her love, her Henry would return;
But ah! the fatal news were brought,
The sea was made his watery urn.
Sweet maids, who know the power of love,
Ye best can tell what she must feel,

Inside the temple door the sullen light
Fell on the mouthing man, who, stern and drear,
Poured down upon the listening crowd the blight
Of his believing, “Find thy God through fear!”

But out within the green, beneath the blue,
Deep in the heart of nature's festival,
“Love! Love!” the glad birds caroled as they flew,
“O Love! Love! Love!” they sang, “For that is all.”

This is the image of my last content:
My soul shall be a little lonely lake,
So hidden that no shadow of man may break
The folding of its mountain battlement;
Only the beautiful and innocent
Whiteness of sea-born cloud drooping to shake
Cool rain upon the reed-beds, or the wake
Of churn'd cloud in a howling wind's descent.
For there shall be no terror in the night
When stars that I have loved are born in me,
And cloudy darkness I will hold most fair;
But this shall be the end of my delight:

I wish to sing the hero's praise,
But love alone employs my lays;
My strings I vary'd, chang'd my lyre,
If diff'rent themes might chance inspire.

In martial verse I try'd to sing
The mighty son of Jove;
My lyre resounds from ev'ry string,
The gentle notes of love.

In vain I other themes essay,
In vain I elevate my lay,
Alike my heart, my hand, my lyre,
The softer theme of love require.

Heroes farewell—No more my song
Of warlike deeds shall be;
Henceforth shall now my lays belong

I had a dream and I awoke with it—
Poor little thing that I had not unclasped
After the kiss good-by.

And at the surface how it gasped—
This thing that I had loved in the unlit

Depth of the drowsy sea. …
Ah me!—
This thing with which I drifted toward the sky.

Driftwood upon a wave—
Senseless the motion that it gave.

O LOVE ! if those clear faithful eyes of thine
Were ever turned away there then should be
No heav'nly looks to take the gloom from mine,
Nor any hills, nor any dales for me,
Nor any honeyed cups of eglantine,
Nor morning spilth of dew on land or sea.
No sun should rise, and leave his eastern tent
To wake the music of the rambling wave,
Nor any freshness of the West be sent
To sweep away night's savours of the grave.
But, when I gaze into those fadeless eyes,
Methinks I am in some mysterious land,

Now say what thing remains
When the smiles fly;
When the lips keep
A stillness deep
As death or sleep,
And the smiles fly;
Now say what thing remains
When the smiles fly.

One thing remains for thee;
From grief's moist sphere.
Without thy call
Ripe fruit will fall
On thee, the thrall
Of Love's last fear;
One thing remains for thee,—
There comes the tear.

Now say what thing remains
When the tears pass;
When from grief sown
New Love upgrown

Where rolls in silent speed through cave on cave
Soul-freighted Acheron, and no other light
Evokes the rocks from an eternal night
Than the pale phosphorescence of the wave,

Shall we not meet, and have one chance to crave
Forgiveness for rash deeds—one chance to right
Old earthly quarrels, and, in Death's despite,
Unsay the said, and heal the pang they gave?

See, see! there looms from yonder soul-filled barque
That passes ours, a long-loved, long-lost face,
And with a cry we stretch our ghostly arms.

On the edge of the wild-wood
Grey doves fluttering:
Grey doves of Astarte
To the woods at daybreak
Lazily uttering.
Their murmured enchantment,
Old as man's childhood;

While she, pale divinity
Of hidden evil,
Silvers the regions chaste
Of cold sky, and broodeth
Over forests primeval
And all that thorny waste's
Wooded infinity.

‘Lovely goddess of groves,’
Cried I, ‘what enchanted
Sinister recesses
Of these lone shades
May still be haunted
By thy demon caresses,

Whene'er I see soft hazel eyes
And nut-brown curls
I think of those bright days I spent
Among the Limerick girls;
When up through Cratla woods I went
Nutting with thee,
And we plucked the glossy clustering fruit
From many a bending tree.

Beneath the hazel boughs we sat,
Thou, love, and I,
And the gathered nuts lay in thy lap,
Beneath thy downcast eye;
But little we thought of the store we'd won,
I, love, or thou;
For our hearts were full, and we dared not own
The love that's spoken now.