love poetry

Is there a soul so dead to nature's charms,
That thrills not here in this divine retreat?
Love lures me evermore to Woman's arms,
But here I kneel at Nature's hallowed feet!
Love fills my being with a calm, replete,
But regal Nature sets my spirit free
With grateful praises to God's Mercy seat.
Yet nature binds me closer, love, to thee:
Ev'n as this dreamy Bay, in sweet felicity;

Our spirits are as one. The morning, love,
Will part us. We have lived an age to-night.
Love is immortal. Hope is from above.
Sit nearer to me, for thine eyes are bright
With tears. There is a fairer land in sight.
Our love is sphered with truth. Eternity
Will crown that love, if we but love aright;
If Love be Truth, indeed. Soft-eyed one! we
Must seek beyond the veil what here can never be!

The stream reflects these cottages, like swans
Reposing on its surface, or faint dreams
But half remembered when the morning dawns,
And tremulous sleep wakes with the day's first beams.
Past the monotonous " Capes . " The moonlight gleams
Full on the mossy slopes and banks that lie
Along the silent shores, as well beseems
So fair a region. Why, love, dost thou sigh?
But wherefore ask, loved one? My own heart tells me why:

If you would know the love which I you bear,
Compare it to the Ring which your fair hand
Shall make more precious when you shall it wear:
So my love's nature you shall understand.
Is it of metal pure? so you shall prove
My love, which ne'er disloyal thought did stain.
Hath it no end? so endless is my love,
Unless you it destroy with your disdain.
Doth it the purer wax the more 'tis tried?
So doth my love: yet herein they dissent,
That whereas gold, the more 'tis purified,
By waxing less doth show some part is spent,

Thus was my love, thus was my Ganymed ,
 (Heavens joy, worlds wonder, natures fairest work,
 In whose aspect Hope and Dispaire doe lurke)
Made of pure blood in whitest snow yshed,
And for sweete Venus only form'd his face,
 And his each member delicately framed,
 And last of all faire Ganymede him named,
His limbs (as their Creatrix) her imbrace.
But as for his pure, spotles, vertuous minde,
 Because it sprung of chaste Dianaes blood,
 (Goddesse of Maides, directresse of all good,)
Hit wholy is to chastity inclinde.

Some talke of Ganimede th' Idalian Boy,
 And some of faire Adonis make their boast
 Some talke of him whom lovely Laeda lost
And some of Ecchoes love that was so coy.
They speake by heere-say, I of perfect truth,
 They partially commend the persons named
 And for them, sweet Encomions I have framed:
I onely t'him have sacrifized my youth.
As for those wonders of antiquitie,
 And those whom later ages have injoy'd,
 (But ah what hath not cruell death destroide?
Death, that envies this worlds felicitie),

Ah no; nor I my selfe: though my pure love
 (Sweete Ganymede ) to thee hath still beene pure,
 And even till my last gaspe shall aie endure,
Could ever thy obdurate beuty move:
Then cease oh Goddesse sonne (for sure thou art,
 A Goddesse sonne that canst resist desire)
 Cease thy hard heart, and entertaine loves fire,
Within thy sacred breast: by Natures art.
And as I love thee more then any Creature,
 (Love thee, because thy beautie is divine:
 Love thee, because my selfe, my soule is thine:

SEVEN TIMES THREE. LOVE .

I LEANED out of window, I smelt the white clover,
Dark, dark was the garden, I saw not the gate;
" Now, if there be footsteps, he comes, my one lover —
Hush, nightingale, hush! O, sweet nightingale, wait
Till I listen and hear
If a step draweth near,
For my love he is late!

" The skies in the darkness stoop nearer and nearer,
A cluster of stars hangs like fruit in the tree,

LXXXIII

A DAY IN SUSSEX

The dove did lend me wings. I fled away
From the loud world which long had troubled me.
Oh lightly did I flee when hoyden May
Threw her wild mantle on the hawthorn tree.
I left the dusty high road, and my way
Was through deep meadows, shut with copses fair.
A choir of thrushes poured its roundelay
From every hedge and every thicket there.
Mild, moon-faced kine looked on, where in the grass
All heaped with flowers I lay, from noon till eve.

LIV

HE DESIRES THE IMPOSSIBLE

I F it were possible the fierce sun should,
Standing in heaven unloved, companionless,
Enshrined be in some white-bosomed cloud,
And so forget his rage and loneliness;
If it were possible the bitter seas
Should suddenly grow sweet, till at their brink
Birds with bright eyes should stoop athirst and drink;
— If these were possible; and if to these
It should be proved that love has sometimes been
'Twixt lambs and leopards, doves and hawks, that snow