love poetry

Acrostic

“Seek ye Love, ye fairy-sprites?
 Ask where reddest roses grow.
Rosy fancies he invites,
And in roses he delights,
 Have ye found him?” “No!”

“Seek again, and find the boy
 In Childhood's heart, so pure and clear.”
Now the fairies leap for joy,
 Crying, “Love is here!”

“Love has found his proper nest;
 And we guard him while he dozes
In a dream of peace and rest
 Rosier than roses.”

The trail's high up on the ridge, on one goes down
But the east wind and the falling water the concave slope without a name to the little bay
That has no name either. The fish-hawk plunges
Beyond the long rocks, rises with streaming silver; the eagle strikes down from the ridge and robs the fish-hawk;
The stunted redwoods neither grow nor grow old
Up the steep slope, remembering winter and the sea-wind; the ferns are maiden green by the falling water;
The seas whiten on the reefs; nothing has changed

I hate this yoke; for the world's sake here put it on:
Knowing 'twill weigh as much on you till life is gone.
Knowing you love your freedom dear, as I love mine —
Knowing that love unchained has been our life's great wine:
Our one great wine (yet spent too soon, and serving none;
Of the two cups free love at last the deadly one).

We grant our meetings will be tame, not honey-sweet,
No longer turning to the tryst with flying feet.
We know the toil that now must come will spoil the bloom

I

Ah, what is love, our love, she said,
Ah, what is human love?
A fire, of earthly fuel fed,
Full fain to soar above.
With lambent flame the void it lips,
And of the impassive air
Would frame for its ambitious steps
A heaven-attaining stair.
It wrestles and it climbs — Ah me,
Go look in little space,
White ash on blackened earth will be

O Heaven, and thou most loving family
Of sister stars, whose intermingled light
From the blue home of this most quiet night
Shineth for aye in conscious unity!
Why bend ye thus your kind looks still on me,
That am a wretch, whose passions' ceaseless fight,
And gnawing thoughts of self—an inborn blight—
But vex the warmth of your pure sympathy?
Mine is no cup for you, blest stars, to pour
The rich draught of your sympathies therein;
It mantled once with all the joys of sin,
And I have quaffed them; now is nothing more,

Vayne loves, avaunt! infamous is your pleasure,
Your joye deceite;
Your jewells jestes, and worthles trash your treasure,
Fooles' common baite.
Your pallace is a prison that allureth
To sweete mishapp, and rest that payne procureth.

Your garden, greif hedgd in with thornes of envye
And stakes of strife;
Your allies, errour gravelled with jelosye
And cares of life;
Your bancks, are seates enwrapt with shades of sadnes
Your arbours, breed rough fittes of raging madnes.

I wage no warr, yet peace I none enjoy;
I hope, I feare, I fry in freesing colde;
I mount in mirth, still prostrate in annoye;
I all the worlde imbrace yet nothing holde.
All welth is want where chefest wishes fayle,
Yea life is loath'd where love may not prevayle.

For that I love I long, but that I lacke;
That others love I loath, and that I have;
All worldly fraightes to me are deadly wracke,
Men present happ, I future hopes do crave:
They, loving where they live, long life require,

One by one lights of a skyscraper fling their checkering cross work on the velvet gown of night.
I believe the skyscraper loves night as a woman and brings her playthings she asks for, brings her a velvet gown,
And loves the white of her shoulders hidden under the dark feel of it all.

The masonry of steel looks to the night for somebody it loves,
He is a little dizzy and almost dances . . . waiting . . . dark . . .

Who loves his friend with his heart of hearts
Bends not his head though the sky rain darts,
O, our lifetime wastes to no lofty end
Till the hero is matched with an equal friend.
Poison from the hand of my love were food,
The sweet & the bane do the heart good.
Knowst thou shy Saadi sits ever alone?
Because he cannot part from the darling one.
Saadi

Wondering long, how I could harmless see
Men gazing on those beams that fired me,
At last I found it was the crystal, Love,
Before my heart that did the heat improve:
Which, by contracting of those scatter'd rays
Into itself, did so produce my blaze.
Now, lighted by my love, I see the same
Beams dazzle those, that me are wont t' inflame;
And now I bless my love, when I do think
By how much I had rather burn than wink.
But how much happier were it thus to burn,
If I had liberty to choose my urn!