love poetry

Vaile, love, mine eyes, O hide from me
The plagues that charge the curious minde:
If beauty private will not be,
Suffice it yet that she proves kinde.
Who can usurp heav'ns light alone?
Stars were not made to shine on one.

Griefes past recure fooles try to heale,
That greater harmes on lesse inflict;
The pure offend by too much zeale,
Affection should not be too strict.
Hee that a true embrace will finde
To beauties faults must still be blinde.

Deep within my heart of hearts, dear,
Bound with all its strings,
Two Loves are together reigning,
Both are crowned like Kings;
While my life, still uncomplaining,
Rests beneath their wings.

So they both will rule my heart, dear,
Till it cease to beat;
No sway can be deeper, stronger,
Truer, more complete;
Growing, as it lasts the longer
Sweeter, and more sweet.

One all life and time transfigures;
Piercing through and through
Meaner things with magic splendor,
Old, yet ever new:

Last night our love seemed splendid certainty;
I held you close and saw the whole round world
With all its fair tumultuous lovely things,
Mirrored within your eyes.

At daybreak, when grey morning slowly lifts
Her heavy eyelids neath the wan sun's gaze,
A cold doubt creeps within my colder heart,
And love seems nought, or at the most seems lies.

She lives, she lives up in the hills,
Where mists and eagles are;
Blithe shepherdess of rocks and rills,
'Twixt mortal and a star.

Of acorns is her necklace made,
And reddest berries found;
While slender vines, in glossy braid,
About her brow are bound.

No fairy foots it half so light,
A dancing on the green;
Nor curls a sunny cloud so bright,
The pines and sky between.

My shepherdess of rocks and rills!
We dwell the world above;
She lives and loves up in the hills,
And I live in her love.

Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow—
We die.
Let us eat and drink. Wherefore borrow
From griefs that will never come nigh?
Spread the feast, pour the wine,
Wreathe the brows with rose-twine,
Woo the harp into pulses of passion divine.
Remember how soon
The belfry's dull rune
Shall summon us hence from our comrades boon.
Then deaf to their cry,
Unheeding the tears of this sorrow,
How low we shall lie!
Then, eat and drink, for tomorrow—
We die.

Let us love and laugh, for tomorrow—
We die.

High is the mountain-top—
But there's a lower peak.
Far away lives my love;
Nearer a girl's to seek.

Oxen and cows hath she—
My love of far away,
Loveliness only holds;
Yet is she rich to-day.

Linen all bleached and white
Lies in my neighbour's chest—
Ah, but an eyebrow black
Counts more than all the rest!

Fair maid so close to me,
What leagues are we apart—
Over the hills to thee
I come, I come, Sweetheart!

How many evenings, walking soberly
Along our street all dappled with rich sun,
I please myself with words, and happily
Time rhymes to footfalls, planning how they run;
And yet, when midnight comes, and paper lies
Clean, white, receptive, all that one can ask,
Alas for drowsy spirit, weary eyes
And traitor hand that fails the well loved task!

Who ever learned the sonnet's bitter craft
But he had put away his sleep, his ease,
The wine he loved, the men with whom he laughed,
To brood upon such thankless tricks as these?

All things that are on earth shall wholly pass away,
Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye.
The forms of men shall be as they had never been;
The blasted groves shall lose their fresh and tender green;
The birds of the thicket shall end their pleasant song,
And the nightingale shall cease to chant the evening long;
The kine of the pasture shall feel the dart that kills,
And all the fair white flocks shall perish from the hills.
The goat and antlered stag, the wolf and the fox,

We who are left must wait the years' slow healing,
Seeing the things they loved, the life they lost—
The clouds that out the east come, huge, concealing
The angry sunset, burnished, tempest-tossed.
How will we bear earth's beauty, visions, wonder,
Knowing they loved them in the self-same way—
Th' exulting lightning followed by deep thunder,
Th' exhilaration of each dawning day?
Banners of northern lights for them loom greener,
Waving as waves the sea-weed's streamered head;
Where bent the swaying wheat, the sunburned gleaner

Although a thousand leagues two hearts divide,
That love has joined, the gulf is not so great
As that twixt two, who, dwelling side by side
Behold between, the black abyss of Hate.