love poems

There are those who love the sunny Southern ocean
With its olive-clad and myrtle-scented shore
And its waves that know no wrestling tides' commotion;
They will dream of its clear waters evermore:
For in Italy—perhaps—Love bent and blessed them,
Smiling angel-like from depths of bluest sky
So they love the land where perfect Love caressed them
More than all lands, and will love it till they die.

Others heard Love whisper through the English larches,
Heard in gentle spring his gentleness of tone;

Glad sight wherever new with old
Is joined through some dear homeborn tie;
The life of all that we behold
Depends upon that mystery.

Vain is the glory of the sky,
The beauty vain of field and grove
Unless, while with admiring eye
We gaze, we also learn to love.

The Power that lifts the leaf above
And sends the root below,
Sustains the heart in brother-love
And makes it heavenward grow.

Between our folding lips
God slips
An embryon life, and goes;
And this becomes your rose.
We love, God makes: in our sweet mirth
God spies occasion for a birth.
Then is it His, or is it ours?
I know not—He is fond of flowers.

Sweeter far than lyric rune
Is my baby's cooing tune;
Brighter than the butterflies
Are the gleams within her eyes;
Firmer than an iron band
Serves the zephyr of her hand;
Deeper than the ocean's roll
Sounds her heart-beat in my soul.

The doctors came, they looked, they said:
“She is not ill, let her but lie
A day or two, at ease, in bed,—
There is no thought that she must die.”

But he, her lover, heart like lead;
Watching the life-tides come and go,
Trembled nor could be comforted:
The eyes of love, they know, they know.

When I am easy about love I am easy about life and death:
It makes no difference to me then if the sun does not shine:
I am not worried because affairs go wrong when love goes right:
I reach out and somehow everything falls into the palm of my hand—
All beauty and goodness fall there, all dreaming and hoping fall there:
Though I own no lands and am without fame yet I am as rich as love:
The old jealousies slip away, the grudges and animosities slink out of sight:
Now all life gathers round me—all the people and all the stars gather:

More love, more love; The heavens are blessing, The
angels are calling, O Zion, more love.
If ye love not each other In daily communion, How
can ye love God, Whom ye have not seen?

I heard my love published in church,
I rose from my seat and went out in the porch.
I thought she was constant, as constant could be,
But now she is going to get married.

When I saw my love to the church go,
Bridesmen and bridemaidens they made a fine show.
Then I followed after with my heart full of woe,
For to see how my false love discarded.

When I saw my love in the church stand
With the glove putting off and the ring putting on,
Then I thought to myself that you ought to be mine,
But now she is tied to some other.

“C OME away! come, sweet love!”
The golden morning breaks:
All the earth, all the air,
Of love and pleasure speaks;
Teach thine arms then to embrace,
And sweet rosy lips to kiss
And mix our souls in mutual bliss:
Eyes were made for beauty's grace
Viewing, ruing, love's long pains
Procured by beauty's rude disdain.

Come away! come, sweet love!
Do not in vain adorn
Beauty's grace, that should arise
Like to the naked morn:
Lilies on the river's side
And fair Cyprian flowers newly blown