love poetry

Love
Is a brown man's fist
With hard knuckles
Crushing the lips,
Blackening the eyes, —
Hit me again,
Says Clorinda.

Were there lovers in the lanes of Atlantis:
Meeting lips and twining fingers
In the mild Atlantid Springtime?
How should I know
If there were lovers in the lanes of Atlantis,
When the dark sea drowned her mountains
Many years ago?

Were there poets in the paths of Atlantis:
Eager poets, seeking beauty
To adorn the women they worshipped?
How can I say
If there were poets in the paths of Atlantis?
For the waters that drowned her mountains
Washed their beauty away.

Were I as base as is the lowly plain,
And you, my Love, as high as heaven above,
Yet should the thoughts of me, your humble swain,
Ascend to heaven in honour of my love.
Were I as high as heaven above the plain,
And you, my Love, as humble and as low
As are the deepest bottoms of the main,
Wheresoe'r you were, with you my love should go.

Were you the earth, dear Love, and I the skies,
My love should shine on you like to the Sun,
And look upon you with ten thousand eyes,

Welcome, little Robin,
With your scarlet breast,
In this winter weather
Cold must be your nest.
Hopping on the carpet,
Picking up the crumbs,
Robin knows the children
Love him when he comes.

Weep not for me, Loved Woman,
Should I die;
But for yourself be weeping!

Weep not for warriors who go
Gladly to battle.
Theirs to revenge
Fallen and slain of our people;
Theirs to lay low
All our foes like them,
Death to make, singing.

Weep not for warriors,
But weep for women!
Oh, weep for all women!

Theirs to be pitied
Most of all creatures,
Whose men return not!
How shall their hearts be stayed
When we are fallen?

Weep not for me, Loved Woman,

We need a new patriotism,
A patriotism of unselfishness,
Of impartial good will;
A patriotism that loves other nations
As we love our own.

We need a far-seeing patriotism
That will look beyond the deeds of today
To the consequences of tomorrow;
A patriotism that can envision universal Commonweal.

We need an all-inclusive patriotism
Of practical unity,
Of co-operation,
Of active brotherhood,
As wide as the world
And as deep as the Kingdom of God.

We need a new patriotism,

We are not near enough to love,
I can but pity all your woe;
For wealth has lifted me above,
And falsehood set you down below.

If you were true, we still might be
Brothers in something more than name;
And were I poor, your love to me
Would make our differing bonds the same.

But golden gates between us stretch,
Truth opens her forbidding eyes;
You can't forget that I am rich,
Nor I that you are telling lies.

Love never comes but at love's call,
And pity asks for him in vain;

The way her breasts meet is hidden from me
By her lips asking my lips if I am here and
The flight of her thighs to her belly is
Too swift for my eye that lingers her love is too
Swift for a lover in love I should have been a
Jealous husband. I am an old fellow too old
For her who puts on her nightdress singing
And who laughs as she comes to bed I am too old
I should be a jealous husband instead of her love
I should be more than a page of print she knows by heart.

Old meeting-house bell
I love thy music well
It peals through the air
Sweetly full & fair
As in the early times
When I listened to its chimes.

I WANT to sing something — but this is all —
I try and I try, but the rhymes are dull
As though they were damp, and the echoes fall
Limp and unlovable.

Words will not say what I yearn to say —
They will not walk as I want them to,
But they stumble and fall in the path of the way
Of my telling my love for you.

Simply take what the scrawl is worth —
Knowing I love you as sun the sod
On the ripening side of the great round earth
That swings in the smile of God.