love poetry

A pale wraith stood in the dim grey dawn
Beside his old love's bed
Wavering like a film of lawn
And wrang his hands and said,
"Oh! I have come to make my prayer
For I cannot take my rest
When I think of the red crown I called your hair
And the cold stone in your breast.

"Out of the eyeless hopeless dark
The nights that are black and grey
Never a moon or faint star-spark
Or a lonely glimmer of day.
Oh! my love, I have come, love,
From the ebony gates of death
For the sake of the red crown I called your hair

"Light of my life lie close
Oh! Love, I have found you at last;
Let me hear your low sweet voice
The knell of the aching past.
The lashes lie on your cheek
Oh! lift them and show me your eyes;
Twin stars in a mortal face,
They are soft, they are kind, they are wise."

"Heart of my hungry heart
My hero whose hand is in mine
If we fall let it be to the pit,
For to-day we have touched the divine.
Time has stood still to-day....
This day which has squandered its sun.
It has been all glory and gold

TWO DAYS
(February 15--September 28, 1894)


To V. G.

That day we brought our Beautiful One to lie
In the green peace within your gates, he came
To give us greeting, boyish and kind and shy,
And, stricken as we were, we blessed his name:
Yet, like the Creature of Light that had been ours,
Soon of the sweet Earth disinherited,
He too must join, even with the Year's old flowers,
The unanswering generations of the Dead.
So stand we friends for you, who stood our friend

Ask me not how they came,
These songs of love and death,
These dreams of a futile stage,
These thumb-nails seen in the street:
Ask me not how nor why,
But take them for your own,
Dear Wife of twenty years,
Knowing--O, who so well?--
You it was made the man
That made these songs of love,
Death, and the trivial rest:
So that, your love elsewhere,
These songs, or bad or good--
How should they ever have been?

Last night I dreamed of the maid with yellow curls.
She came to me in the room above my shop,
And we two were alone, freed from the laws of day.
I held her then to myself.
I took from her her clothing, garment by garment,
And watched them fall about her feet,
White petals of a flower.
And I drew from her to myself her thoughts, one by one,
As often I had wished, till all of her was mine.

Then I was sad, for nothing was left to love.
And I quickly clothed her again, garment by garment,
And gave her back her thoughts, one by one,

Love owes tribute unto Death,
Being but a flower of breath,
Ev'n as thy fair body is
Moment's figure of the bliss
Dwelling in the mind of God
When He called thee from the sod,
Like a crocus up to start,
Gray-eyed with a golden heart,
Out of earth, and point our sight
To thy eternal home of light.

Here on earth is all we know:
To let our love as steadfast blow,
Open-hearted to the sun,
Folded down when our day's done,
As thy flower that bids it be
Flower of thy charity.
'Tis not ours to boast or pray

Sea, sea,
Bounding and free,
O soothe me to sleep with thy sweet lullaby!
As when a child,
Sportive and wild,
Thy waves and I gamboll'd, thou gem-crested sea!

Sea, sea,
Laugh on in glee;
How dear to the sailor thy sweet monody!
Soul-soothing calm,
Soul-healing balm,
For hearts beating fondly for hearts on the sea!

Sea, sea,
Tempest-lashed sea!
O spare in thy fury, smite not angrily
Hearts true and brave,

Call it to mind, O my love.
Dear were your eyes as the day,
Bright as the day and the sky;
Like the stream of gold and the sky above,
Dear were your eyes in the grey.
We have lived, my love, O, we have lived, my love!
Now along the silent river, azure
Through the sky’s inverted image,
Softly swam the boat that bore our love,
Swiftly ran the shallow of our love
Through the heaven’s inverted image,
In the reedy mazes round the river.
See along the silent river,

See of old the lover’s shallop steer.

A great king made a feast for Love,
And golden was the board and gold
The hundred, wondrous gauds thereof;
Soft lights like roses fell above
Rare dishes exquisite and fine;
In jeweled goblets shone the wine--
A great king made a feast for Love.

Yet Love as gladly and full-fed hath fared
Upon a broken crust that two have shared;
And from scant wine as glorious dreams drawn up
Seeing two lovers kissed above the cup.

A great king made for Love's delight
A temple wonderful wherein

My love it should be silent, being deep--
And being very peaceful should be still--
Still as the utmost depths of ocean keep--
Serenely silent as some mighty hill.

Yet is my love so great it needs must fill
With very joy the inmost heart of me,
The joy of dancing branches on the hill,
The joy of leaping waves upon the sea.