love poetry

Others call it love in laziness,
or violence in loveliness,
or affectation on the couchness,
or Won't you ever get up for lunchness,
or I have made an awful mistake, Miss,
or You're prurient, yes you are, Sis,
whereas I prefer beer in beer glassness
and to dwell on the past less.

In old jokes a monarch is referred to as Your Lowness.
Maidens exist, but no one anymore calls them this.
I don't think any less of them. Nevertheless,
this thing you're going to find for us?
It's called love-in-idleness—

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And "Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore;

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be;
And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

Again I see you, ah my queen,
Of all my old loves that have been,
The first love, and the tenderest;
Do you remember or forget—
Ah me, for I remember yet—
How the last summer days were blest?

Ah lady, when we think of this,
The foolish hours of youth and bliss,
How fleet, how sweet, how hard to hold.
How old we are, ere spring be green.
You touch the limit of eighteen
And I am twenty winters old.

My rose, that mid the red roses,
Was brightest, ah, how pale she is.
Yet keeps the beauty of her prime;

I am a fool, I can no good:
Who that me loveth, I holde him wood.
I brenne hot, I smite sore:
Who that me loveth shal thee no more.
Dredful deth out of me sprong,
For I am welle of wo;
I slow a wise king, fair and strong,
And yet I shal slee mo.

When I came to you banned, dishonored,
Brother of yours no more,
And raised my hands where your roof-tree stands,
Why did you open the door?

When I came to you starving, thirsting,
Beggared of aught but sin,
Why did you rise with welcoming eyes
And lift me and bid me in?

You have set me first at your feast,
You have robed me in tenderness,
Yet, Brothers of mine, these tears for sign
That I would your grace were less.

For I had not been crushed by your hate,
Who courted the pain thereof;

There is an eye that never sleeps
Beneath the wing of the night;
There is an ear that never shuts
When sink the beams of light.

There is an arm that never tires
When human strength gives way;
There is a love that never fails
When earthly loves decay.

That eye is fixed on seraph throngs;
That arm upholds the sky;
That ear is filled with angel songs;
That love is throned on high.

But there's a power which man can wield,
When mortal aid is vain,
That eye, that arm, that love to reach,

What makes a garden?
Flowers, grass and trees,
Odor, grace and color:
Lovely gifts like these.

What makes a garden
And why do gardens grow?
Love lives in gardens—
God and lovers know!

You call me cold: you wonder why
The marble of a mien like mine
Gives fiery sparks of Poesy,
Or softens at Love's touch divine.

Go, look on Nature, you will find
It is the rock that feels the sun:
But you are blind,—and to the blind
The touch of ice and fire is one.

For years of lonely thought, in morning-tide
Of life, will make a spirit all unfit
To brook of men the waywardness and pride;
Too proud itself to woo, or to submit;
Scorning, as vile, what all adore beside,
And deeming only glorious the soul lit
With the pure flame of knowledge, and the eye
Fill'd with the gentle love of the bright earth and sky.

I love thee, yet I fear. Behold I stand
Before a spotless judge. Thy soul I see,
Holding the balance with a steady hand,
That doth not tremble as thou look'st on me.
Before those light-filled eyes of equity,
Before those features, beautiful, austere,
I cannot stand. How feel thy soul so near
And feel myself unstained, pure, clean and whole?
I love thee,—yea, I love thee,—but I fear
I fear the comment of thy spotless soul.