love poetry

LOVE love to-day, my dear,
Love is not always here;
Wise maids know how soon grows sere
The greenest leaf of Spring;
But no man knoweth
Whither it goeth
When the wind bloweth
So frail a thing.

Love love, my dear, to-day,
If the ship's in the bay,
If the bird has come your way
That sings on summer trees;
When his song faileth
And the ship saileth
No voice availeth
To call back these.

Now, O now, in this brown land
— Where Love did so sweet music make
We two shall wander, hand in hand,
— Forbearing for old friendship' sake,
Nor grieve because our love was gay
Which now is ended in this way.

A rogue in red and yellow dress
— Is knocking, knocking at the tree;
And all around our loneliness
— The wind is whistling merrily.
The leaves — they do not sigh at all
When the year takes them in the fall.

Now, O now, we hear no more
— The villanelle and roundelay!

Dear heart, why will you use me so?
— Dear eyes that gently me upbraid,
Still are you beautiful — but O,
— How is your beauty raimented!

Through the clear mirror of your eyes,
— Through the soft cry of kiss to kiss,
Desolate winds assail with cries
— The shadowy garden where love is.

And soon shall love dissolved be
— When over us the wild winds blow —
But you, dear love, too dear to me,
— Alas! why will you use me so?

Winds of May, that dance on the sea,
Dancing a ring-around in glee
From furrow to furrow, while overhead
The foam flies up to be garlanded,
In silvery arches spanning the air,
Saw you my true love anywhere?
Welladay! Welladay!
For the winds of May!
— Love is unhappy when love is away!

O NOT more surely Love lies hid
— Among the clustered crimson roses,
Than he, whose name thy lips forbid
— Within thy secret heart reposes,
And not more surely Love will fly
— When Zephyrus hath ceased his fooling,
Than Anger in thy breast shall die,
— And thou confess the Monarch ruling.

D UMB Comforter of woes!
The depth of whose deep comfort no man knows.
Whose consolations on the spirit steal
More gently than Love's gentlest word, and heal
Where Love falls back affrighted — only Life
Proves Thee the Comforter of mortal strife,
Of all that doth begin and end, that He
May speak in Thy dread silence endlessly.

What vision of the softly sleeping eyes
— Shone like the vision that they could not see?
Night, quivering with the children of the skies
Resplendently.

Fair is her dream. But ah! what fairest dream
— Is half so lovely as the dawn of day,
When the first golden gleam
Chases the rose and dove colour away?

'T IS not Love that is dead,
But Hope, his sister fair.
They breathed the self-same air,
On the same food they fed.
The soul of Love with awful strength was filled
By Passion — but his sister, Hope, was killed.

Plant not the lily here!
No lily lies below.
The crimson rose to her was dear,
And the summer of the year,
Not the snow.

— Sing no lament!
She loved a merry song.
For her the birds were sent.
To her the humming of the golden bees,
And the murmur of trees

Find me, O my true love, find me,
— All the words by love made strongest,
— All the words that last the longest,
For an oath, an oath to bind me!

In the East the dawn grows brighter,
— On the wind I hear a whistle.
— Light the down upon the thistle.
Yea, true love, but I am lighter!