love poetry

O Gentle Love, ungentle for thy deed,
Thou makest my heart
A bloody mark
With piercing shot to bleed.
Shoot soft, sweet Love, for fear thou shoot amiss,
For fear too keen
Thy arrows been,
And hist the heart where my beloved is.
Too fair that fortune were, nor never I
Shall be so blest,
Among the rest,
That Love shall seize on her by sympathy.
Then since with Love my prayers bear no boot,
This doth remain
To cease my pain,
I take the wound, and die at Venus' foot.

weary lot is thine, fair maid,
A weary lot is thine!
To pull the thorn thy brow to braid,
And press the rue for wine.
A lightsome eye, a soldier's mien,
A feather of the blue,
A doublet of the Lincoln green—
No more of me ye knew,
My Love!
No more of me ye knew.
'This morn is merry June, I trow,
The rose is budding fain;
But she shall bloom in winter snow
Ere we two meet again.'
—He turn'd his charger as he spake
Upon the river shore,
He gave the bridle-reins a shake,

And in that rosy rosy hour,
When bird sang out and scented flower,
Came words to me from heaven above:
'Awake, young heart, awake and love!'

You gave me a rose
last time we met.

I told myself
if it bloomed
our love would bloom,
& if it died-

O I did not
consider
the possibility.

It died.

Though I cut
the stem
on a slant
as my mother
taught me,
though I dropped
an aspirin
in the water,

it hung its head
like a spent cock
& died.

It stands
on my desk now-
straight green stalk,
blood-red clot
of bud
drooping

The treasure at the heart of the rose
is your own heart's treasure.
Scatter it as the rose does:
your pain becomes hers to measure.

Scatter it in a song,
or in one great love's desire.
Do not resist the rose
lest you burn in its fire.

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

Shall I love God for causing me to be?
I was mere utterance; shall these words love me?

Yet when I caused His work to jar and stammer,
And one free subject loosened all His grammar,

I love Him that He did not in a rage
Once and forever rule me off the page,

But, thinking I might come to please Him yet,
Crossed out 'delete' and wrote His patient 'stet'.

And in Life's noisiest hour,
There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy.


You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within ;
And to the leading Love-throb in the Heart
Thro' all my Being, thro' my pulses beat ;
You lie in all my many Thoughts, like Light,
Like the fair light of Dawn, or summer Eve
On rippling Stream, or cloud-reflecting Lake.
And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you,
How oft ! I bless the Lot, that made me love you.

Where you are now, the only lights are stars
and oil lamps flaring on vine-covered porches.
Where you are now, it must be midnight.
No one has bothered to name all the roads
that overlook the sea. The freshened air
smells of myrtle and white jasmine. A church
stands on the headland, and I hope it might
keep one thought of me alive in your head.

Autumn is here: warm days becoming cold.
The trees dropp more leaves, love, each time it rains.
I eat my meals with the TV turned on,

TELL me not of a face that 's fair,
   Nor lip and cheek that 's red,
Nor of the tresses of her hair,
   Nor curls in order laid,
Nor of a rare seraphic voice
   That like an angel sings;
Though if I were to take my choice
   I would have all these things:
But if that thou wilt have me love,
   And it must be a she,
The only argument can move
   Is that she will love me.

The glories of your ladies be
   But metaphors of things,
And but resemble what we see