love poetry

Some day when Death shall come with quiet footsteps
To lead me far away,
And memories it took a life to gather
Are scattered in a day,

I think that there is one will never leave me
Through all the changing years,
And that your love will follow me undaunted
Across those dark frontiers.

Within a forest, as I strayed
Far down a sombre autumn glade,
I found the god of love;
His bow and arrows cast aside,
His lovely arms extended wide,
A depth of leaves above,
Beneath o'erarching boughs he made
A place for sleep in russet shade.

His lips, more red than any rose,
Were like a flower that overflows
With honey pure and sweet;
And clustering round that holy mouth,
The golden bees in eager drouth
Plied busy wings and feet;
They knew, what every lover knows,

This passion is but an ember
Of a Sun, of a Fire, long set;
I could not live and remember,
And so I love and forget.

You say, and the tone is fretful,
That my mourning days were few,
You call me over forgetful—
My God, if you only knew!

Soft follower of the early star,
Once more I feel you drawing near.
Come! for my evening is not come
Till you are here.

You make it—as yourself is made—
Of loveliest, sweet, untroubled things,
Fled with love's day. I feel love's night
Fall from your wings.

In a Roses' bower
Sweet Philomel sat, singing
All her night-long passion to those lovely hearts:

Only the Moon looked on them,
Heard what she sang; and the Roses
Answered, breathing their perfumes back from echoing depths.

The trees they lean'd in their love unto trees,
That lock'd in their loves, and were so made strong,
Stronger than armies; ay, stronger than seas
That rush from their caves in a storm of song.

Sky scanned the mind and found behind
Holes in the mind, more mind behind,
Clouds to provide appearances of thought.

‘Dear Sister!’ it cried,
‘One kiss!’
The bland outrage
Spread over both as one,
Whispering ‘This is heaven.’

‘Oh, no,’ said the populations
Getting out of bed into slippers,
‘What lovely weather!
To-day is Sunday!’

My mother's gone a-wandering
Away to yonder town;
My father in the alehouse
Is safely settled down;
There's not a girl to gossip;
There's not a lad at home:
I'm all alone and waiting—
So come, my darling, come!
Tell me what I'm doing
By the fire-light here,
All for you, love, all for true love,
All for luck, my dear.

I told a lady's fortune
In that big house hard by
No Gipsy could have done it
More cleverly than I;
I promised that she'd marry
A lord with heaps of gold;

Bid me not sing: think of the gifts I gave
To love and thee; require me not to sing!
They who crown poets now must pass me by:
I have no claim to wear the bays they bring.
To please thy mood one day I broke my lute,
And now forever is my music mute.

Bid me not sing: since when thy mouth met mine,
“Love, love,” the only words my lips can say.
Lost is the cunning of my worshipped art;
Among my peers I must walk dumb alway.
For thee I counted song a worthless thing.
My heart will break if now thou bidst me sing!

From my love me they would part,
From my love so fair.
A fair lady did I love,
Loved with all my mind and heart,
But fortune and the fates above
Keep me still from her apart,
From my love so fair.

And since her from me they keep,
Will I go to distant lands,
My ill fortune there to weep
And my love so fair.

Now must I from her depart,
But if thus my eyes that grieve
And my life my love must leave,
Here, O here remains my heart
With my love so fair.