love poetry

I

You love all, you say,
 Round, beneath, above me:
Find me then some way
 Better than to love me,
Me, too, dearest May!

II

O world-kissing eyes
 Which the blue heavens melt to;
I, sad, overwise,
 Loathe the sweet looks dealt to
All things—men and flies.

III

You love all, you say:
 Therefore, Dear, abate me
Just your love, I pray!
 Shut your eyes and hate me—
Only me —fair May!

I

I CLASSED , appraising once,
Earth's lamentable sounds, — the welladay,
The jarring yea and nay,
The fall of kisses on unanswering clay,
The sobbed farewell, the welcome mournfuller, —
But all did leaven the air
With a less bitter leaven of sure despair
Than these words — " I loved ONCE ."

No hope in life; yet is there hope
In death, the threshold of man's scope:
Man yearneth (as the heliotrope

For ever seeks the sun) thro' light
Thro' dark for Love: all read aright
Is Love for Love is infinite.

Shall not this infinite Love suffice
To feed thy dearth? Lift heart and eyes
Up to the hills, grow glad and wise.

The hills are glad because the sun
Kisses their round tops every one
Where silver fountains laugh and run:

Smooth pebbles shine beneath; beside

Oh for my love, my only love,
Oh for my lost love far away! —
Oh that the grass were green above
Her head or mine this weary day: —
The grass green in the morning grey.

She lies down in a foreign land
And in a foreign land doth rise.
I cannot hold her by the hand;
I cannot read her speaking eyes
That turned mere spoken words to lies.

This is the bough she leaned upon
And watched the rose deep western sky,
For the last sun rays almost gone:
I did not hear the wind pass by,

When we can all so excellently give
The measure of love's wisdom with a blow, —
Why can we not in turn receive it so,
And end this murmur for the life we live?
And when we do so frantically strive
To win strange faith, why do we shun to know
That in love's elemental over-glow
God's wholeness gleams with light superlative?

Oh, brother men, if you have eyes at all,
Look at a branch, a bird, a child, a rose,
Or anything God ever made that grows, —
Nor let the smallest vision of it slip,

DEDICATION TO THE Nursery " A LICE ," 1889

A Mother's breast:
Safe refuge from her childish fears,
From childish troubles, childish tears,
Mists that enshroud her dawning years!
See how in sleep she seems to sing
A voiceless psalm — an offering
Raised, to the glory of her King,
In Love: for Love is Rest.

A Darling's kiss:
Dearest of all the signs that fleet
From lips that lovingly repeat
Again, again, their message sweet!
Full to the brim with girlish glee,

There was an old Rabbi of Ur;
He loved a Miss Beaulieu.
She sent him a letter: " Dear Sir . . ."
Then a stone-cold " Yours truly."
Now what she could mean
By the dots in between
Is not plain to be seen.
We can but infer the Rabbi of Ur
Enquired of Miss Beaulieu.

When Love, puffed up with rage of high disdain,
Resolved to make me pattern of his might,
Like foe, whose wits inclined to deadly spite,
Would often kill, to breed more feeling pain;
He would not, armed with beauty, only reign
On those affects which eas'ly yield to sight,
But virtue sets so high, that reason's light,
For all his strife can only bondage gain:
So that I live to pay a mortal fee,
Dead-palsy sick of all my chiefest parts;
Like those whom dreams make ugly monsters see,

Why should I be bound to thee
O my lovely mirtle tree
[Love free love cannot be bound
To any tree that grows on ground]

To a lovely mirtle bound
Blossoms showring all around
[Like to dung upon the ground
Underneath my mirtle bound]
O how sick & weary I
Underneath my mirtle lie

Love to faults is always blind
Always is to joy inclind
[Always] Lawless wingd & unconfind
And breaks all chains from every mind

Deceit to secresy [inclind] confind
[Modest prudish & confind]
Lawful cautious [changeful and] & refind
[Never is to] To every thing but interest blind
[And chains & fetters every mind]
And forges fetters for the mind