love poetry

Madam
I hope you'll think it's true
I deeply am in love with you,
When I assure you t' other day,
As I was musing on my way,
At thought of you I tumbled down
Directly in a deadly swoon:
And though 'tis true I'm something better,
Yet I can hardly spell my letter:
And as the latter you may view,
I hope you'll think the former true.
You need not wonder at my flame,
For you are not a mortal dame:
I saw you dropping from the skies;
And let dull idiots swear your eyes
With love their glowing breast inspire,

Oh! weep with me the changing scene,
Torn from thy arms, devoured with spleen.
Instead of those dear eyes, I look
Upon the fire, or else a book:
But oh! how dull must either be
To eyes that have been studying thee!
Unless the poet does express
Something that strikes my tenderness,
I throw the leaves neglected by,
And in my chair supinely lie;
Or to the pen and ink I haste,
And there a world of paper waste.
All I can write, though love is here,
Does much unlike my soul appear.
Angry, the scrawling side I turn,

While vulgar souls their vulgar love pursue,
And in the common way themselves undo;
Impairing health and fame, and risking life,
To be a mistress or, what's worse, a wife:
We, whom a nicer taste has raised above
The dangerous follies of such slavish love,
Despise the sex, and in our selves we find
Pleasures for their gross senses too refined.
Let brutish men, made by our weakness vain,
Boast of the easy conquest they obtain;
Let the poor loving wretch do all she can,
And all won't please th' ungrateful tyrant, Man;

Enslav'd by Passions, swell'd with Pride,
In Love with one whom all deride;
A Carcass well, yet Mind in Pain,
Reduc'd to beg, but beg in vain;
To live reserv'd, and free from Blame,
And yet incur an evil Fame:
Let this! this, be the wretched Fate,
Of Rosalinda, whom I hate.

It is a fearful trust, the trust of love.
In fear, not hope, should woman's heart receive
A guest so terrible. Ah! never more
Will the young spirit know its joyous hours
Of quiet hopes and innocent delights;
Its childhood is departed.

And yet it is a wasted heart:
It is a wasted mind
That seeks not in the inner world
Its happiness to find;

For happiness is like the bird
That broods above its nest,
And finds beneath its folded wings,
Life's dearest, and its best.

A little space is all that hope
Or love can ever take;
The wider that the circle spreads,
The sooner it will break.

The sun was setting o'er the sea,
A beautiful and summer sun;
Crimson and bright, as if not night,
But rather day had just begun:
That lighted sky, that lighted sea,
They spoke of Love and Hope to me.

I thought how Love, I thought how Hope,
O'er the horizon of my heart
Had poured their light like yonder sun;
Like yon sun, only to depart:
Alas! that ever suns should set,
Or Hope grow cold, or Love forget!

Weep for the love that fate forbids;
Yet loves, unhoping, on,
Though every light that once illumed
Its early path be gone.

Weep for the love that must resign
The soul's enchanted dream,
And float, like some neglected bark,
Adown life's lonely stream!

Weep for the love that cannot change;
Like some unholy spell,
It hangs upon the life that loved
So vainly and so well.

Weep for the weary heart condemned
To one long, lonely sigh,
Whose lot has been in this cold world,

Youth , love, and rank, and wealth — all these combined,
Can these be wretched? Mystery of the mind,
Whose happiness is in itself; but still
Has not that happiness at its own will.
She felt too wretched with the sudden fear —
Had she such lovely rival, and so near?
Ay, bitterest of the bitter this worst pain,
To know love's offering has been in vain;
Rejected, scorn'd, and trampled under foot,
Its bloom and leaves destroyed, but not its root.
" He loves me not! " — no other words nor sound
An echo in the lady's bosom found:

Fear not to trust her destiny with me:
I can remember, in my early youth,
Wandering amid our old ancestral woods,
I found an unfledged dove upon the ground,
I took the callow creature to my care,
And fain had given it to its nest again:
That could not be, and so I made its home
In my affection, and my constant care.
I made its cage of osier-boughs, and hung
A wreath oFearly leaves and woodland flowers:
I hung it in the sun; and, when the wind
Blew from the cold and bitter east, 'twas screen'd