poems about love

O PLUCK the blossom in its crimson prime,
Ere yet one tender hue has passed away!
So shall it never know the winter time,
Sere blight of frost, or livid, slow decay.
While now thou fold'st me to thy fluttering breast,
In the sweet tremor of thy love and shame,
And like a stock-dove cooing on its nest,
Thou murmurest low the accents of my name;
While now the sense of laboring time is gone —
Swooned in the sea, lost, buried anywhere —
While all I heed of heaven or world alone,
Lies in thine arms, pavilioned by thy hair,

Who wrongeth love doth himself grievous wrong;
For he hath shut away the light of heaven
And doomed his darkened soul to wander long
In nether exile, desolate, unforgiven;
Till at God's feet, imploring his release,
Wronged love, all pardoning, shall win his peace.

Thus in her low voice like the silver chime
Of bells heard over distant hills by night,
She read aloud her chosen poet's rhyme —
How two of old found favor in love's sight;
And one was false and one with cureless wound,

When all is said and sung, what is the sum?
Love, only love.
What brightest dream hath youth of years to come?
What retrospect turn dim eyes latest from?
Love, only love.

What word sounds sweetest in the poet's rhyme?
Love, only love.
What tales first told in some forgotten clime,
From heart to heart, throb through the lapse of time?
Love, only love.

The guide-star of the soul's divine endeavor,
Love, only love.
The bond of lives which death cannot dissever,
The litany the seraphs sing forever —

Oh , in what lonely valley, dimly seen
Through dusky aisles of immemorial trees,
Or on what lovely island, couched serene
In azure zones of unfrequented seas,
Blossoms the Lotus, fabled flower of ease?

For none have found it in the city street,
Among the wicked weeds that rankle there,
The matted sins that snare unwary feet,
The poison growth of slander, shame and care,
The hemlock leaves of anguish and despair.

Even in the fair, benignant face of heaven,
On sunny plain or solitary hill,

Love was primeval; from forgotten time
Come hints of common lives by love made great,
In pastoral song or fragmentary rhyme,
While fades the fame of many a warlike state.
Love lives forever, though we pass away;
Still shall there be hot hearts and longing eyes,
Hyperion youths and maids more fair than they,
Loath lips and lingering hands and parting sighs,
When we have vanished and our simple doom
Is blended with the themes of old romance.
Ay, from our dust young buds and flowers shall bloom,

Thou strokest back my heavy hair
With smothered praises in thy touch,
Thy long, proud look doth call me fair
Before thy lips have vowed me such.

And when between each long caress
Thou gazest at me held apart,
And with impulsive tenderness
Refoldest closer to thy heart,

Over love's deep, within thine eyes,
I see the artist's rapture brood;
And sometimes will this thought arise;
(O Love, why must a fear intrude!)

What if some sudden thing, as dread
As that which happened yesterday,

I lie on my pallet bed,
And I hear the drip of the rain;
The rain on my garret roof is falling,
And I am cold and in pain.

I lie on my pallet bed,
And my heart is wild with delight;
I hear her voice through the midnight calling,
As I lie awake in the night.

I lie on my pallet bed,
And I see her bright eyes gleam;
She smiles, she speaks, and the world is ended,
And made again in a dream.

Good to be loved and to love for a little, and then
Well to forget, be forgotten, ere loving grow life!
Dear, you have loved me, but was I the man among men?
Sweet, I have loved you, but scarcely as mistress or wife.

Message of Spring in the hearts of a man and a maid,
Hearts on a holiday: ho! let us love: it is Spring.
Joy in the birds of the air, in the buds of the glade,
Joy in our hearts in the joy of the hours on the wing.

Well, but to-morrow? To-morrow, good-bye: it is over.

Oh ! what a world it might be,
If hearts were always kind;
If, Friendship, none would slight thee,
And Fortune prove less blind!
With Love's own voice to guide us —
Unchangingly and fond —
With all we wish beside us,
And not a care beyond.
Oh! what a world it might be;
More blest than that of yore:
Come, learn, and 'twill requite ye,
To love each other more.

Her eyes are haunted, eyes that were
Scarce sad when last we met.
What thing is this has come to her
That she may not forget?

They loved, they married: it is well!
But ah, what memories
Are these whereof her eyes half tell,
Her haunted eyes?