love poetry

This was our house. To this we came
Lighted by love with torch aflame,
And in this chamber, door locked fast,
I held you to my heart at last.

This was our house. In this we knew
The worst that Time and Fate can do.
You left the room bare, wide the door;
You did not love me any more.

Where once the kind warm curtain hung
The spider's ghostly cloth is flung;
The beetle and the woodlouse creep
Where once I loved your lovely sleep.

Yet so the vanished spell endures,

Ever since You were the home of love for me, my love has lived where You have lived. Because of You, I have delighted in the wrath of my enemies; let them be, let them torment the one whom You tormented. It was from You that they learned their wrath, and I love them, for they hound the wounded one whom You struck down. Ever since You despised me, I have despised myself, for I will not honour what You despise. So be it, until Your anger has passed, and again You will redeem
Your own possession, which You once redeemed.**

**From the bondage of Egypt.

Thinking him a man,
I stretched out my right hand towards him.

As soon as I kept my hand on his hand,
my hand got wet with a horrid smell.

I washed my hand many times
with ashes
and with sweet-smelling soaps.

I went bathing many times in the Ganges
and in all the oceans.

Even I bathed my whole body
with sacredness, hatred and love.

Yet that horrid smell has not vanished at all
from my right hand and from my whole body.

Alas! now I think of that hand-

XI
Belovèd, those who moan of love's brief day
Shall find but little grace with me, I guess,
Who know too well this passion's tenderness
To deem that it shall lightly pass away,
A moment's interlude in life's dull play;
Though many loves have lingered to distress,
So shall not ours, sweet Lady, ne'ertheless,
But deepen with us till both heads be grey.
For perfect love is like a fair green plant,
That fades not with its blossoms, but lives on,

I have been so great a lover: filled in days
So proudly with the splendor of Love's praise,
The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,
Desire illimitable, and still content,
And all dear names men use, to cheat despair,
For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear
Our hearts at random down the dark of life.
Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife
Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far,
My night shall be remembered for a star
That outshone all the suns of all men's days.

Love, I am sick for thee, sick with an absolute grief,
Sick with the thought of thy eyes and lips and bosom.
All the beauty I saw, I see to my hurt revealed.
All that I felt I feel to--day for my pain and sorrow.

Love, I would fain forget thee, hide thee in deeper night,
Shut thee where no thought is, in the grave with tears.
Love, I would turn my face to the wall and, if needs be, die;
Death less cruel were than thy eyes which have blinded me.

Since thou art gone from me, glory is gone from my life;

Had I the grace to win the grace
Of some old man in lore complete,
My face would worship at his face,
And I sit lowly at his feet.

Had I the grace to win the grace
Of childhood, loving shy, apart,
The child should find a nearer place,
And teach me resting on my heart.

Had I the grace to win the grace
Of maiden living all above,
My soul would trample down the base,
That she might have a man to love.

A grace I had no grace to win
Knocks now at my half open door:

I've wearied of so many things
Adored in youthful days;
Music no more my spirit wings,
E'en when Master play.
For stage and screen I have no heart,
Great paintings leave me cold;
Alas! I've lost the love of Art
That raptured me of old.

Only my love of books is left,
Yet that begins to pall;
And if of it I am bereft,
I'll read no more at all.
Then when I am too frail to walk
I'll sit out in the sun,
And there with Nature I will talk . . .
Last friend and dearest one.

1
They that in play can do the thing they would,
Having an instinct throned in reason's place,
--And every perfect action hath the grace
Of indolence or thoughtless hardihood--
These are the best: yet be there workmen good
Who lose in earnestness control of face,
Or reckon means, and rapt in effort base
Reach to their end by steps well understood.
Me whom thou sawest of late strive with the pains
Of one who spends his strength to rule his nerve,
--Even as a painter breathlessly who stains

ALL singers have shadows
That follow like fears,
But I know a singer
Who never saw tears;
A gay love—a green love—
Delightsome—divine:
The Spring is that singer—
An old love of mine!

All players have shadows,
And into the play
Old sorrows will saunter—
Old sorrows will stay.
But here is a player
Whose speech is divine:
The Spring is that player—
An old love of mine!

All singers grow heavy: