poems about love

'Twixt heat and cold, 'twixt death and life,
I freeze and burn, I live and die;
Which jointly work in me such strife,
I live in death, in cold I fry:
Nor hot, nor cold, nor 'live, nor dead,
Neither, and both, this life I lead.

First, burning heat sets all on fire,
Whereby I seem in flames to fry;
Then cold Despair kills hot Desire,
That drenched deep in death I lie:
Heat drives out cold, and keeps my life;
Cold quencheth heat, no end of strife.

The less I hope to have my will,

They say that shadows of deceased ghosts
Do haunt the houses and the graves about,
Of such whose life's lamp went untimely out,
Delighting still in their forsaken hosts:
So, in the place where cruel Love doth shoot
The fatal shaft that slew my love's delight,
I stalk, and walk, and wander day and night,
Even like a ghost with unperceived foot.
But those light ghosts are happier far than I,
For, at their pleasure, they can come and go
Unto the place that hides their treasure so,
And see the name with their fantastic eye:

“D O YOU NOT KNOW I LOVE YOU ?”—So you cried,
And blessed my lips with kisses multiplied,
Sweeter than those for which Adonis died—
Kisses that promised true love's long endurance;
While your dear eyes in mine my soul were reading,
With wistful, anxious, eager question pleading,
To know if I believed the sweet assurance.

“Y ES , I DO KNOW YOU LOVE ME ,”—I replied,
“And in that love I am beatified;
“It is my wealth, my glory, and my pride,
“The evening-glory of a clouded west:”—
Without it earth were but a desert dreary,

Without a home at holy Christmas-tide,
Sad-hearted at the feast of all the year,
These were strange words you told me, Phoebe dear;
I have no social joys when all beside
Meet with such blessed mirth round happy fires.
When the long-parted greet and draw fresh love
From ceaseless flow of talk that never tires;
Through all the homes there is no place for me.
No place, no room; dear friend, if it can be
One thought of joy to you, then know
My heart grew larger at your words, as though

As I listen,
bells
tolling over Hatsu River
fade off,
one by one—
falling onto
my sleeves,
becoming

I will not
call it
merely his cruelty—
but just regard it
as the sad plight
of one
with no pledge
from a former life.

Vanquished and weary was my soul in me,
And my heart gasped after its much lament,
When sleep at length the painful languor sent.
And, as I slept (and wept incessantly),—
Through the keen fixedness of memory
Which I had cherished ere my tears were spent,
I passed to a new trance of wonderment;
Wherein a visible spirit I could see,
Which caught me up, and bore me to a place
Where my most gentle lady was alone;
And still before us a fire seemed to move,
Out of the which methought there came a moan

Lady of Heaven, the mother glorified
Of glory, which is Jesus,—He whose death
Us from the gates of Hell delivereth
And our first parents' error sets aside:—
Behold this earthly Love, how his darts glide—
How sharpened—to what fate—throughout this earth!
Pitiful Mother, partner of our birth,
Win these from following where his flight doth guide.
And O, inspire in me that holy love
Which leads the soul back to its origin,
Till of all other love the link do fail.
This water only can this fire reprove,—

“O Lord, how canst Thou say Thou lovest me?
Me whom Thou settest in a barren land,
Hungry and thirsty on the burning sand,
Hungry and thirsty where no waters be
Nor shadows of date-bearing tree:—
O Lord, how canst Thou say Thou lovest me?”

“I came from Edom by as parched a track,
As rough a track beneath My bleeding feet.
I came from Edom seeking thee, and sweet
I counted bitterness; I turned not back
But counted life as death, and trod
The winepress all alone: and I am God.”

Ah! once I thought I loved the rose
And once I loved the sky,
Its calm yet passionate repose,
Its blue eternity,—
But now I love thy lips and eyes,
Thy beauty I adore,
I worshipped flowers and summer skies
But thee I worship more.

I know not whether love is pain;
It sometimes brings despair:
Then blooms the summer rose in vain;
In vain it scents the air.
If thou dost wrap my soul in doubt
And bid bright hope fly far,
Though all night's countless stars shine out
I never see one star.