love poetry

With my hart my loue was nesled
 into the sonne of happynesse;
ffrom my loue my liffe was rested
 into a world of heauinesse;
O lett my loue my liffe remaine,
since I loue not where I wold.

Darksome distance doth devyde vs,
 ffarr ffrom thee I must remaine;
dismall planetts still doth guide vs,
 ffearing wee shold meete againe;
but ffroward ffortune once remoued,
then will I liue where I wold.

Iff I send them, doe not suspect mee;
 but if I come, then am I seene;
O let thy wisdome soe direct mee

The need to love that all the stars obey
Entered my heart and banished all beside.
Bare were the gardens where I used to stray;
Faded the flowers that one time satisfied.

Before the beauty of the west on fire,
The moonlit hills from cloister-casements viewed,
Cloud-like arose the image of desire,
And cast out peace and maddened solitude.

I sought the City and the hopes iTheld:
With smoke and brooding vapors intercurled,
As the thick roofs and walls close-paralleled
Shut out the fair horizons of the world—

Though o'er the board the constellations shine,
Austere the feast for Time's retainers spread, —
Laughter the salt of life, and love the wine,
Sleep the sweet herbs, and toil the gritty bread.

I sat and read Anacreon.
Moved by the gay, delicious measure
I mused that lips were made for love,
And love to charm a poet's leisure.

And as I mused a maid came by
With something in her look that caught me.
Forgotten was Anacreon's line,
But not the lesson he had taught me.

On Love

Sing , heart of spring, along the winter ways,
Go lightly feet, 'twas here His footsteps fell,
The birds sing of Him for he counted them
And knew them all, the little wingèd loves
Like happy thoughts! Yea, every leaf that kissed
Him passing in the garden hath such life
As puts our immortality to shame.
The winds are pregnant with His message now,
The universal, all-uniting winds
That know no limitation, like the spirit
Of mighty truths, sweeping creation's bounds,

The Winter Sun is a Miser
His joy is to hoard and hold,
But the Summer Sun is wiser
He freely gives his gold.

With lavish and broad disbursal,
Beneath and around and above,
He sows his wealth Universal,
And reaps universal love.

Once there in my garden fair
Sang a bird of plumage rare,
From its throat there came to greet
My ear sweet music—strangely sweet.

Once a flower of lovely hue
In this self same garden grew,
Blossomed—oh, so sweetly there
That its breath perfumed the air.

Once a flower of lovely hue
This same garden murmured through,
Over shining stones it played,
Softest, richest music made.

In this garden 'neath a tree
That cast its copious shade for me,
Was a restful cool retreat

Sleep, sleep, imperious heart! Sleep, fair and undefiled!
Sleep and be free.
Come in your dreams at last, comrade and queen and child,
At last to me.

Come, for the honeysuckle calls you out of the night.
Come, for the air
Calls with a tyrannous remembrance of delight,
Passion, and prayer.

Sleep, sovereign heart! and now, — for dream and memory
Endure no door, —
My spirit undenied goes where my feet, to thee,
Have gone before.

A moonbeam or a breath, above thine eyes I bow,

Give not to me, mid the thunder
And speed of the world's hot wheels,
Such love as perhaps the Marble
For the Alabaster feels.

But love me with love as fiery
As the furnace whence arose
Both Marble and Alabaster,
In the Earth's primeval throes.

Nature has no solitude
For those who list to her,
Her voice is daily heard to speak
To them distinct and clear.

Think'st thou the broad expanse
Of lake, of ocean grand,
The flow of brooks and rivers,
And stretch of level land,

The grandeur of the mountains,
The flowers, the grass, the trees,
The rocks, the birds, the insects, —
Think'st thou not that these,

These things and others, too, which make
Up Nature, truly they
Speak to the inward man — the soul —