love poetry

How can I tell thee when I love thee best?
In rapture or repose? how shall I say?
I only know I love thee every way,
Plumed for love's flight, or folded in love's nest.
See, what is day but night bedewed with rest?
And what the night except the tired-out day?
And 'tis love's difference, not love's decay,
If now I dawn, now fade, upon thy breast.
Self-torturing sweet! Is't not the self-same sun
Wanes in the west that flameth in the east,
His fervour nowise altered nor decreased?
So rounds my love, returning where begun,

Queen of all streets, you stand alway
Lovely by dusk or dark or day.
Cruellest of streets that I do know,
I love you wheresoe'er I go.

The daytime knows your lyric wonder:
Your tunes that rhyme and chime and thunder,
And exiles vision with delight
Your million-blossomed charm of night.

Sweet frivolous frock and fragrant face
Your shadow-fretted pavements trace;
And all about your haunted mile
Hangs a soft air, a girlish smile.

But other steps make echo here,
With curse and prayer and wasted tear;

OH , loving and forgiving—
Ye angel-words of earth,
Years were not worth the living
If ye toOHad not birth!
Oh, loving and forbearing—
How sweet your mission here;
The grief that ye are sharing
Hath blessings in its tear.

Oh, stern and unforgiving—
Ye evil words of life,
That mock the means of living
With never-ending strife.
Oh, harsh and unrepenting—
How would ye meet the grave,
If Heaven, as unrelenting,
Forbore not, nor forgave!

Oh, loving and forgiving—

There is a country full of wine
And liquor of the sun,
Where sap is running all the year,
And spring is never done,
Where all is good as it is fair,
And love and will are one.
Old age may never come there,
But ever in today
The people talk as in a dream
And laugh slow time away.

But would you stay as now you are,
Or as a year ago?
Oh, not as then, for then how small
The wisdom we did owe!
Or if forever as today,
How little we could know!

Then welcome age, and fear not sorrow;

Down in a garden, sat my dearest love;
Gay saffron flowers grew all around her;
The bluest sky shone in the heavens above:
Nay! had, but thus, the bright-limbed Cynthius found her,
He would have loved her, so that she had been
His Daphne, and his laurels green.

I leave the marts where gold, where silver's won,
For places where their hues alone are seen,
In yellow flowers, that burnish in the sun—
And white, that silver-tip the May-banks green.
And on his scrambled heaps the miser's eyne,
Amorous of his bane, did never gloat
With half of my delight when as I note
The moonlight silvering the waters sheen,
And herein am I richer far and wiser
Than him who barters life for Commerce' wealth,
And as he groweth rich turns poor and miser,
Losing the life of life—delight and health—

Full well it may be seen
To such as understand,
How some there be that ween
They have their wealth at hand:
Through love's abusèd band
But little do they see
The abuse wherein they be.

Of love there is a kind
Which kindleth by abuse,
As in a feeble mind
Whom fancy may induce
By love's deceitful use
To follow the fond lust
And proof of a vain trust.

As I myself may say,
By trial of the same,
No wight can well bewray
The falsehood love can frame.
I say, twixt grief and game,

I was a child with all a child's wild prayers,
That followed Love yet ever saw him flee,
His splendid feet on-speeding silently;
His wings gold tinctured spread athwart life's stairs
Ascending ever, and yet unawares
Oft turning his fair face and suddenly
Fixing his deep eyes smilingly on me:
So climbing girlhood caught at unguessed cares

But one Spring day Love halted in his flight
And straight let flash an arrow at my heart,
So that I swooned, who strove to reach his side …
When I awoke, a sea of saffron light

To the Bearer. Hold, are you mad? you damn'd confounded Dog,
I am to rise, and speak the Epilogue.
To the Audience. I come, kind Gentlemen, strange news to tell ye
I am the Ghost of poor departed Nelly.
Sweet Ladies, be not frighted, I'le be civil,
I'm what I was, a little harmless Devil.
For after death, we Sprights, have just such Natures,
We had for all the World, when humane Creatures;
And therefore I that was an Actress here,
Play all my Tricks in Hell, a Goblin there.
Gallants, look to't, you say there are no Sprights;

Ah, how sweet it is to love!
Ah, how gay is young Desire!
And what pleasing pains we prove
When we first approach Love's fire!
Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are.

Sighs which are from lovers blown
Do but gently heave the heart:
Ev'n the tears they shed alone
Cure, like trickling balm, their smart:
Lovers, when they lose their breath,
Bleed away in easy death.

Love and Time with reverence use,
Treat them like a parting friend;
Nor the golden gifts refuse