love poetry

Yet not this color, not these lovely forms,
That chiefly should engross and ask thy praise;
Rather the revelation of abiding grace
Continuous, as the morning's voice
Lifts up the chant of universal faith,
Perpetual newness and the health in things.
This, is the startling theme, the lovely birth
Each morn of a new day, so wholly new,
So absolutely penetrated by itself,
The fresh, the fair, the ever-living grace,—
The tender joy, that still forever clothes
This orb of Beauty, this, of bliss the abode!

As one upon no mission bent
I came—no sacerdotal cause
Save just to live by nature's laws,
And her direct arbitrament.
To hold in awe; to please myself,
And thus the world a service do;
To drive devoid the greed of pelf,
The product of my labor mine.
To crouch to none, to crave no sway,
But inward from the leagues of blue
To drink the gladness of the lovely day,
To dwell in peace, and bear no fruitless pain.

But I—who love the wood and stream,
The winning voice of Day and Night,

Three ladies went a-walking
Among the garden bowers;
They said: “Would we had with us
Those lovers brave of ours.”
A little bird, all silent,
Listened among the flowers.

“What will you pay me, ladies,
To be ambassador?”
The first said: “I will pay thee
This purse of gold, and more.”

“I will pay,” said the second,
“A nosegay sweet, like this.”
And the third, who was the fairest:
“I will pay a true-love kiss.”

The little bird went flying
Past tower and roof and tree,

Last night no comb held back my hair,
My silken tresses covered both my shoulders
As I stretched myself upon your knees
Was I not made for love?

O hands that I have held in mine,
That knew my kisses and my tears,
Hands that in other years
Have poured my balm, have poured my wine;

Women, once loved, and always mine,
I call to you across the years,
I bring a gift of tears,
I bring my tears to you as wine.

Nay, lady, one frown is enough
In a life as soon over as this—
And though minutes seem long in a huff,
They're minutes 'tis pity to miss!
The smiles you imprison so lightly
Are reckon'd, like days in eclipse;
And though you may smile again brightly,
You've lost so much light from your lips!
Pray, lady, smile!

The cup that is longest untasted
May be with our bliss running o'er,
And, love when we will, we have wasted
An age in not loving before!
Perchance Cupid's forging a fetter
To tie us together some day,

O judgment sleep!
I love an unkind thief.
Let me be friend of Frailty
For my sick heart's relief.

I would be as the shore's sand
Subject to an advancing sea,
I would be as sunken land
Swept by a tide's strong mastery.

But my contemning mind is as a lighthouse tower,
And I am sore for strength, and lashed because of power.

I LOVE thee well, thou solitary Cave,
Though thee no legend, or of war or love,
Or mermaid issuing from her coral grove
Ennoble: nought beside the fretful wave
That round thy portal arch doth idly rave,
Has waked thine echoes; nor in lonely age
Has seaman sought thee for his hermitage,
That ocean's voice might lull him to his grave
I love thee for his sake who brought me here,
Companion of my wildered walk, and bore
A part in all those visions dim and dear
In which my tranced spirit loves to soar,

Out at sunrise on Romney Marsh
We hear the curlew call,
The young lambs crying to the sheep
Within the old sea-wall;
The bleak tree that the sea-wind strikes
Is bowed across the lilied dykes,
All heaven drifting with the lark,
The lark that sings for all.

You gather mushrooms from the grass,
The newborn mushrooms white,
And stoop about with tender cries
That come of pure delight.
The sheep-lit pastures run for miles
With distant villages for isles,
And Lymne's grey castle on the down

How hard from loving to refrain,
How hard to bear the lover's pain,
But harder still than all, to prove
The pangs of unrequitted love.
Nor worth, nor wisdom now avail
The fair one's bosom to assail;
'Gainst each accomplishment 'tis steel'd,
And only will to riches yield.
Oh! may the wretch be doubly curst,
Who taught the use of money first!
How, by his fatal art has he
Made friends and brothers disagree!
What wars, what slaughters we behold
For sake of this detested gold!
To gold, the source of ill to all,