love poetry

Can it be true the triple years have passed
With dull and laggard steps above your head,
And yet, my Own, I cannot make you dead!
Light of my life, the glamour that you cast
Is with me still — I hold it close and fast,
And, if from Earth it has not wholly fled,
May not the sunshine which your presence shed
Break through this leaden loneliness at last?
Not that I would my bitter pain deny,
For Love is Pain and I would pay its price,
The poignant price of what was once so sweet!
The Cross that Christ Himself did sanctify

I care not what your age;
Turn but another page,
And you shall know
You have not known
The depth of Love's
Great undertone.
The song of life forever young.
Is in your heart as yet unsung.

No longer need his soul for beauty seek —
How wondrous fair her skin, her features' mold,
The lily hand which lay upon her cheek,
The bright hair backward rolled!

A spirit seemed she, flown within his ken,
And in his heart a mighty love upsprung;
He could have clasped her to his bosom then,
Aside all custom flung.

And she, who felt the fire of his long gaze
Fall on her soul like sunrise on the sea,
Turned her lit eyes, and met his own half-ways,
And knew that it was he.

DEAR E DITH , I am pondering now,
With the sweet south wind on my brow,
And thoughtful eyes, which only see
The past, in sky, and grass, and tree.

Into the past I go to seek
The lustre of thy maiden cheek,
And all thy graces debonair —
I go to seek, and find them there.

Canst thou revisit, as I do,
The time wherein I learned to woo?
The time when, young in thought and years,
We learned love's lore of smiles and tears?

Our early love founDearly cure,
But, cousin mine, of this be sure —

A SAILOR once wooed a farmer's daughter,
The fairest lass in all the country side.
She loved him well; but when he besought her
With beating, beating heart to be his bride,
“A sailor lad,” she said, “I'll never, never wed,
And live a wife and widow all in one;
O no, my charmer shall be a farmer,
Returning faithful with the set of sun.”

At danger's call, across the water
The sailor went, but left his heart behind;
Fresh lovers whispered the farmer's daughter;
Yet when they prayed her to confess her mind,

This is the hour when falls the fadeless light
And hearts turn homeward, weariness oppressed,
To healing springs of sacramental night,
To lofty sources of inspiring rest.

This is the hour when earth-lights disappear,
And starry openings through the night's dim walls
Let angel whispers steal upon the ear
While on the heart Love's perfect music falls.

This is the hour. Lo, all the space around
Is stilled to peace, and down the subtle air
No breezes stir, no step nor word nor sound,

ON his flute of gold the blackbird bold
Love's tale to his melting mate has told,
And now the thieves have started;
And o'er the ground, in fluttering round,
Enamoured fly, whilst you and I
In lonesome pain are parted.
But when hearts beat true through the night of sorrow,
They're blest the more when the magic morrow
Its rosy ray has darted.
Fortune may wave her wings and fly,
But she'll flutter back again by and by,
And crown the constant-hearted.

These birds that pair the April air

Had I been true to my deep loneliness,
Nor sought a lesser love to soothe my grief,
Had I been willing not to find relief,
But so to live, companioned by distress,
I, sometimes, to my inner soul confess
The fierce and inarticulate belief
That such despair forever held in fief
Could heal my spirit better than caress.
I have done nothing wrong — I only take
A human love that longed to lift my woe,
I only give a tender sympathy,
And yet — ah! yet, I sometimes long to wake
Alone, to taste again the bitter throe

Love has a myriad of winning ways
Beside the wells of his deep tenderness,
The frolic of his fugitive caress
As in my hair his wanton finger strays,
The lyric laughter of his witching gaze
That draws my own, reluctant, to confess
The swift response that borders on distress,
So clearly it my willing heart betrays.
Love sometimes makes a petulant pretense
Of injured dignity that he doth feign,
As though, in truth, his wayward heart did swell
With artless ardor in his own defence, —
A playful parody of poignant pain,

OH ! a wan cloud was drawn
O'er the dim, weeping dawn,
As to Shannon's side I returned at last;
And the heart in my breast
For the girl I loved best
Was beating — ah beating, how loud and fast

While the doubts and the fears
Of the long, aching years
Seemed mingling their voices with the moaning flood;
Till full in my path,
Like a wild water-wraith,
My true love's shadow lamenting stood.

But the sudden sun kissed