love poems

With laughter swimming in thine eye,
That told youth's heartfelt revelry;
And motion changeful as the wing
Of swallow waken'd by the spring;
With accents blythe as voice of May
Chaunting glad Nature's roundelay;
Circled by joy like planet bright
That smiles 'mid wreathes of dewy light,—
Thy image such, in former time,
When thou, just entering on thy prime,
And woman's sense in thee combined
Gently with childhood's simplest mind,
First taught'st my sighing soul to move
With hope towards the heaven of love!

Love was true to me,
True and tender;
I who ought to be
Love's defender
Let the cold winds blow
Till they chilled him;
Let the winds and snow
Shroud him—and I know
That I killed him.

Years he cried to me
To be kinder;
I was blind to see
And grew blinder.
Years with soft hands raised
Fondly reaching,
Wept and prayed and praised,
Still beseeching.

When he died I woke,
God! how lonely,
When the grey dawn broke
On one only.
Now beside Love's grave
I am kneeling;

Before the grass grew over me,
I knew one good man through and through
And knew a soul and body joined
Are stronger than the heavens are blue.

A wisdom worthy of thy joy,
O great heart, read I as I ran;
Now, though men smite me on the face,
I cannot curse the face of man.

I loved the man I saw yestreen
Hanged with his babe's blood on his palms.
I loved the man I saw to-day
Who knocked not when he came with alms.

Hush!—for thy sake I even faced
The knowledge that is worse than hell;

I hear that the peonies are magnificent
in the famous gardens now
and that rich families will be enjoying them
until spring is almost gone.
What a shame! I too am a man who loves to look at flowers
but I am much too busy, watering my vegetable patch!

I have desired, and I have been desired;
But now the days are over of desire,
Now dust and dying embers mock my fire;
Where is the hire for which my life was hired?
Oh vanity of vanities, desire!

Longing and love, pangs of a perished pleasure,
Longing and love, a disenkindled fire,
And memory a bottomless gulf of mire,
And love a fount of tears outrunning measure;
Oh vanity of vanities, desire!

Now from my heart, love's deathbed, trickles, trickles,
Drop by drop slowly, drop by drop of fire,

The womanhood of France is travestied,
Held up to scorn
By the lewd Art of France. Yet many a heart
In France is nobler than all Gallic Art:
Love hath not wholly died,
Though love may mourn

Though sweet-lipped harlots on the Gallic stage
Still hold their own,
Sweet-lipped, sweet-bosomed, but with hearts as black
And deadly as the midnight's moonless rack,
Yet Hugo thrilled the age
With sound as of a sudden trumpet blown.

Hugo, with Shakespeare's sweetness in his eyes,
And in his heart

Thou dost not know the numberless sweet heats
To whom the gentle knowledge of thee came
Through the soft messages my song imparts:
Thou dost not know how many gold-tipped darts,
Winged, beautiful, abundant, bright with flame,
My soul, on fire with loving thee, doth aim
Against the steel-bound cuirass of the world,
That so it might be pierced with utter shame,
In that it has not known and loved of old
The name that I from height to height have hurled.
There is not any flower, with heart of gold,

He had a falcon on his wrist,
A hound beside his knee,
A jewelled rapier at his thigh;
Quoth he: “Which may she be?
My chieftain cried: ‘Bear forth, my page,
This ring to Lady Clare;
Thou'lt know her by her sunny eyes
And golden lengths of hair.’
But here are lovely damsels three,
In glittering coif and veil,
And all have sunny locks and eyes,—
To which unfold the tale?”

Out spake the first: “O pretty page,
Thou hast a wealthy lord;
I love to see the jewels rare
Which deck thy slender sword!”

He stood beside her in the dawn—
And she his Dawn and she his Spring.
From her bright palm she fed her fawn,
Her swift eyes chased the swallow's wing;
Her restless lips, smile-haunted, cast
Shrill silver calls to hound and dove;
Her young locks wove them with the blast.
To the flushed azure shrine above
The light boughs o'er her golden head
Tossed emerald arm and blossom palm;
The perfume of their prayer was spread
On the sweet wind in breath of balm.

“Dawn of my heart,” he said, “O child,

How moving, man and woman singing in one body!
She only hopes for divine aid, her heart out on the waves.
In the crazed anguish of the autumn wind, love's grass lies exposed;
ten thousand leagues of misty waves, the depth of her tears' traces.