love poetry

The Loves who many years held all my mind,
A charge so troublesome at last resign'd.
Among my books a feather here and there
Tells what the inmates of my study were.
Strong for no wrestle, ready for no race,
They only serve to mark the left-off place.
'Twas theirs to dip in the tempestuous waves,
'Twas theirs to loiter in cool summer caves;
But in the desert where no herb is green
Not one, the latest of the flight, is seen.

The Simmer time in simmers prime
And the sweet meadow grasses
How sweet the swathes the pretty paths
Where throng the bonny lasses
The tawny bee hums oer the lea
There seeking for the hinney
Bright speckled thrush in white thorn bush
Sings sangs of Love to Jeannie.

For Jeannies rare and Jeannies fair
And handsome as she's bonny
And gay she walks and sweet she talks
The fairest maid o' ony
Bullrushes quiver down the river
A sort o' glassy Ocean
A glittering light gems each stem bright

While yet we wait for spring, and from the dry
And blackening east that so embitters March,
Well-housed must watch grey fields and meadows parch,
And driven dust and withering snowflake fly;
Already in glimpses of the tarnish'd sky
The sun is warm and beckons to the larch,
And where the covert hazels interarch
Their tassell'd twigs, fair beds of primrose lie.

Beneath the crisp and wintry carpet hid
A million buds but stay their blossoming;
And trustful birds have built their nests amid

The poets were good teachers, for they taught
Earth had this joy; but that 'twould ever be
That fortune should be perfected in me,
My heart of hope dared not engage the thought.
So I stood low, and now but to be caught
By any self-styled lords of the age with thee
Vexes my modesty, lest they should see
I hold them owls and peacocks, things of nought.

And when we sit alone, and as I please
I taste thy love's full smile, and can enstate
The pleasure of my kingly heart at ease,
My thought swims like a ship, that with the weight

The very names of things belov'd are dear,
And sounds will gather beauty from their sense,
As many a face thro' love's long residence
Groweth to fair instead of plain and sere:
But when I say thy name it hath no peer,
And I suppose fortune determined thence
Her dower, that such beauty's excellence
Should have a perfect title for the ear.

Thus may I think the adopting Muses chose
Their sons by name, knowing none would be heard
Or writ so oft in all the world as those,—
Dan Chaucer, mighty Shakespeare, then for third

The whole world now is but the minister
Of thee to me: I see no other scheme
But universal love, from timeless dream
Waking to thee his joy's interpreter.
I walk around and in the fields confer
Of love at large with tree and flower and stream,
And list the lark descant upon my theme,
Heaven's musical accepted worshipper.

Thy smile outfaceth ill: and that old feud
'Twixt things and me is quash'd in our new truce;
And nature now dearly with thee endued
No more in shame ponders her old excuse,

For thou art mine: and now I am ashamed
To have usèd means to win so pure acquist,
And of my trembling fear that might have misst
Thro' very care the gold at which I aim'd;
And am as happy but to hear thee named,
As are those gentle souls by angels kisst
In pictures seen leaving their marble cist
To go before the throne of grace unblamed.

Nor surer am I water hath the skill
To quench my thirst, or that my strength is freed
In delicate ordination as I will,
Than that to be myself is all I need

They that in play can do the thing they would,
Having an instinct throned in reason's place,
—And every perfect action hath the grace
Of indolence or thoughtless hardihood—
These are the best: yet be there workmen good
Who lose in earnestness control of face,
Or reckon means, and rapt in effort base
Reach to their end by steps well understood.

Me whom thou sawest of late strive with the pains
Of one who spends his strength to rule his nerve,
—Even as a painter breathlessly who strains

How often must I pass the moonlight nights alone?
I gaze far—far—for the Seven Scents Chariot.
My girdle drops because my waist is shrunken.
The golden hairpins of my disordered head-dress are all askew.

I did not speak, dear heart, before you fled
So swiftly through the silent, star-swept dawn.
I dreamed of love and rose to find you gone
With all my love unsaid.

I did not speak—yet now when night grows grey,
You turn to me from that strange other-land
With wistful smile and eyes that understand
All that my heart would say.