poems about love

The need to confide
Which Christ had
And every bird to bird
Though secretless their frantic code —

Shall I like meteor speed?
Flared martyr to companionhood
Streaking towards some Siberia of love,
There to fall stony, for the books to say:
" These homeless stars upon arrival turn
Instantly cool, are earth.
The danger to ourselves is less than theirs
Of fierce extinguishment
Before precipitant despair
Gains grave among us.
Seldom in daily midst the fevered bolt
Seeks catastrophic bosoming.

Equally dismal rain and sunshine—
If the hours are hours of waiting
To say for certain: you, and I.
Happily there is this sure we,
Happily there is this love,
This chosen ambiguity,
Until the weather knows its mind.

Meanwhile this to-day,
To succeed never beyond the weather—
Until it climates death,
That double clarity
Of difference.

1

Woman, reviling term
Of Man unto the female germ,
And Man, reproach of Woman
In this colloquy,
Have grown so contrary
That to have love
We must combine chastely next
Among the languages
Where calling is obscene
And words no more than mean.

2

" Yes!" to you is in the same breath
" No! No!" to Death.
And your " Yes! Yes!" to me
Is " No!" to Death once angrily.
The Universe, leaning from a balcony,
Says: " Death comes home to me

No more are lovely palaces
And Taj-Mahal is old.
The listening tenements,
The wakeful entertainments,
Waited wide and many ages
For the spirits of the promises
That more than men would come,
Would come the visitants evoked
By lovely palaces
And such emblazoned places
Men would never light for men.

A little surer now you know
They do not come the way you go.
And better build you and more soberly—
Houses fitter for you to leave
Than to receive
The more than haughty hosts

The formulas of recognition
Apply themselves to memories.
There's where,
There's when,
There's there.

Yes, a nice time.
I met three fishermen out on the bay
Who couldn't understand language.
I found a mercadon —
What's a mercadon? —
And dined with native nobility,
But there's no place like home!

Yes, true-love — not travel.
It was a sky
Not just to look at
But prove —
If possible,
If possible.

I went up of love,
I fell down of loves.

See how this Ivy strives to twine
Her wanton arms about the Vine,
And her coy lover thus restrains,
Entangled in her amorous chains;
See how these neighb'ring Palms do bend
Their heads, and mutual murmurs send,
As whisp'ring with a jealous fear
Their loves, into each others ear.
Then blush not such a flame to own
As like thy self no crime hath known;
Led by these harmlesse guides, we may
Embrace and kisse as well as they.
And like those blessed souls above,
Whose life is harmony and love,

To Amoret, of the difference 'twixt him, and other Lover and what true Love is

Marke, when the Evenings cooler wings
Fanne the afflicted ayre, how the faint Sunne,
Leaving undone,
What he begunne,
Those spurious flames suckt up from slime, and earth
To their first, low birth,
Resignes, and brings.

They shoot their tinsill beames, and vanities,
Thredding with those false fires their way;
But as you stay
And see them stray,

Why do I Love? go, ask the Glorious Sun
Why every day it round the world doth Run:
Ask Thames and Tyber , why they Ebb and Flow:
Ask Damask Roses, why in June they blow:
Ask Ice and Hail, the reason, why they're Cold:
Decaying Beauties, why they will grow Old:
They'l tell thee, Fate, that every thing doth move,
Inforces them to this, and me to Love.
There is no Reason for our Love or Hate,
'Tis irresistable, as Death or Fate;
'Tis not his Face; I've sence enough to see,
That is not good, though doated on by me:

Bards of brow funereal
With your profiles angular
As in ancient medals grand,

Ye with air seignorial,
Ye whose glances lie afar,
Ye with voices of command;

Theologians grave and tried,
Vessels of love's meted grace,
Vessels full of sorrows found,

Ye who gaze with vision wide,
Ye whose Christ is in your face,
Ye in tangled locks enwound,—

My Muse—a maid marmoreal
Who seeks oblivion as her star,
Can find alone her raptures fanned

Amid your air seignorial,

Could man be drunk for ever
With liquor, love, or fights,
Lief should I rouse at morning
And lief lie down of nights.

But men at whiles are sober
And think by fits and starts,
And if they think, they fasten
Their hands upon their hearts.