love poetry

“Oh, I will put my ship in order,
And I will set her to the sea;
And I will sail to yonder harbour,
To see if my love will marry me.”

He sailed eastward; he sailed westward;
He sailed far, far by sea and land;
By France and Flanders, Spain and Dover,
He sail'd the world all round and round,

Till he came to his love's sweet bower,
It was to hear what she would say.
“Awake, awake, ye lovely sleeper,
The sun is spreading the break of day.”
“Oh, who is this at my bower window,
That speaks so lovingly to me?”

As each one knew and loved him best, so each one saw the figure of the Lord.
The great warrior kings have seen him as it were chivalry incarnate.
The demons who in guile assumed the royal guise: to them the Lord appeared as Death.
The dwellers in His city saw the two brothers: their eyes beholding the jewels of mankind were blessed.
The women's hearts were filled with joy, each seeing Him fashioned according to her own desire.
His loveliness, wearing the fairest of all fair forms, bewitched their minds.

O prairie mother, I am one of your boys.
I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full of pain over love.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise, or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.
I speak of new cities and new people.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down,
A sun dropped in the west.
I tell you there is nothing in the world
Only an ocean of tomorrows,
A sky of tomorrows.

I am a brother of the cornhuskers who say at sundown:

They told me you were lovely—yes,
The word is true, the judgment just,
While you are silent, motionless
As pictured form or waxen bust;
Your speech turns love to sheer disgust,
Your face it mars, your charm it balks;
Beware the aedile, all mistrust
The omen if a statue talks.

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,
My brother in Mocharabuiee.

I passed by my brother and cousin:
They read in their books of prayer;
I read in my book of songs
I bought at the Sligo fair.

When we come at the end of time
To Peter sitting in state,
He will smile on the three old spirits,
But call me first through the gate;

For the good are always merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle,

Friend , well I know thou knowest well to bear
Thy sword's-point, that it pierce the close-locked mail:
And like a bird to flit from perch to pale:
And out of difficult ways to find the air:
Largely to take and generously to share:
Thrice to secure advantage: to regale
Greatly the great, and over lands prevail.
In all thou art, one only fault is there:
For still among the wise of wit thou say'st
That Love himself doth weep for thine estate;
And yet, no eyes no tears: lo now, thy whim!

O sometimes comes to soul and sense
The feeling which is evidence
That very near about us lies
The realm of spirit-mysteries.

The low and dark horizon lifts,
To light the scenic terror shifts;
The breath of a diviner air
Blows down the answer of a prayer.

Then all our sorrow, pain and doubt
A great compassion clasps about;
And law and goodness, love and force,
Are wedded fast beyond divorce.

Then duty leaves to love its task,
The beggar self forgets to ask;
We feel, as flowers the sun and dew,

When a lover hies abroad
Looking for his love,
Azrael smiling sheathes his sword,
Heaven smiles above.
Earth and sea
His servants be,
And to lesser compass round,
That his love be sooner found!

Beware the man who's crossed in love;
For pent-up steam must find its vent.
Stand back when he is on the move,
And lend him all the Continent.

Renew me with thy being.—I would take
Thy young sweet soul and press it close to mine,
I would make all my stormy yearning thine
And in thine heart mine endless longing slake;
Just as the mountain in the mountain-lake
Sees its own thunder-crowned fierce image shine
And in the blue depth doth itself outline,
And ceases then with lonely pain to ache.

Give me thyself.—Do I not sorely need
—I who have fought for years amid the dust
Of trampling hoofs, and parried stroke and thrust,
And snapped the spear of sorrow like a reed—