love poetry

In the Manner of Sir Walter Raleigh.


The Objector.
Each man who lives, the Scriptures prove,
Must as himself his neighbour love;
But though the precept's full of beauty,
'Tis an impracticable duty:
I'll prove how hard it is to find
A lover of this wondrous kind.

Who loves himself to great excess,
You'll grant
must
love his neighbour less;
When self engrosses all the heart
How can another have a part?
Then if self-love most men enthrall,
A neighbour's share is none at all.

Beloved, you may be as all men say
Only a transient spark
Of flickering flame set in loam of clay –
I care not …since you kindle all my dark
With the immortal lustres of the day.

And as all men deem, dearest, you may be
Only a common shell
Chance-winnowed by the sea-winds from the sea –
The subtle murmurs of eternity.

And tho’ you are, like men or mortal race,
Only a hapless thing
That Death may mar and destiny efface –
I care not … since unto my heart you bring

We've lived for forty years, dear wife,
And walked together side by side,
And you to-day are just as dear
As when you were my bride.
I've tried to make life glad for you,
One long, sweet honeymoon of joy,
A dream of marital content,
Without the least alloy.
I've smoothed all boulders from our path,
That we in peace might toil along,
By always hastening to admit
That I was right and you were wrong.

No mad diversity of creed
Has ever sundered me from thee;
For I permit you evermore

EYES caught by beauty, fancy by eyes caught;
Sweet possibilities, question, and wonder--
What did her smile say? What has her brain thought?
Her standard, what? Am I o'er it or under?
Flutter in meeting--in absence dreaming;
Tremor in greeting--for meeting scheming;
Caught by the senses, and yet all through
True with the heart of me, sweetheart, to you.


Only the brute in me yields to the pressure
Of longings inherent--of vices acquired;
All this, my darling, is folly--not pleasure,

Would'st thou be happy, would'st thou be free,

Come to our woody islands with me!

Come, while the summer sun is high,

Beneath the peach tree's shade to lie;

Or thy hunter will shield thee the live-long day

In his hut of reeds from the scorching ray.

There countless birds with wings of light

Shall flit and glitter before thy sight,

And their songs from the stately palm trees nigh

Shall charm thee with ceaseless melody.

Often between the midnight and the morn
I wake and see the angels round my bed;
Then fall asleep again, well-comforted.
I wait not now till that clear dawn be born
Shall lead my feet (O Love, thine eyes are worn

With watching) where her feet have late been led;
Nor lie awake, saying the words she said—
(Her yellow hair.—Have ye seen yellow corn?)
I fall asleep and dream and quite forget,
For here in heaven I know a new love’s birth


Which casteth out all memory. And yet

Remembering most the old, eternal days,
I cannot curse our life—thy life and mine;
But now, perceiving its complex design,
I go on my intolerable ways,
And, blaming me the more, give thee more praise.

—I dared to think that such a love as thine
Were bounded by each little curve and line
My hand might limn!—by my blind yeas and nays!
And now I say not where thy paths shall be,
Or who shall go or come at thy least call;


Only I know that when thy footsteps fall
Across the silences that cover me,

No, I shall not say why it is that I love you—
Why do you ask me, save for vanity?
Surely you would not have me, like a mirror,
Say 'yes,—your hair curls darkly back from the temples,
Your mouth has a humorous, tremulous, half-shy sweetness,
Your eyes are April grey. . . .with jonquils in them?'
No, if I tell at all, I shall tell in silence . . .
I'll say—my childhood broke through chords of music
—Or were they chords of sun?—wherein fell shadows,
Or silences; I rose through seas of sunlight;

Do but consider this small dust
Here running in the glass,
By atoms moved;
Could you believe that this
The body was
Of one that loved?
And in his mistress' flame, playing like a fly,
Turned to cinders by her eye?
Yes; and in death, as life, unblessed,
To have't expressed,
Even ashes of lovers find no rest.

HERE we came when love was young.
Now that love is old,
Shall we leave the floor unswept
And the hearth acold?
Here the hill-wind in the dusk,
Wandering to and fro,
Moves the moonflowers, like a ghost
Of the long ago.
Here from every doorway looks
A remembered face,
Every sill and panel wears
A familiar grace.
Let the windows smile again
To the morning light,
And the door stand open wide
When the moon is bright.
Let the breeze of twilight blow
Through the silent hall,