poems about love

She dreams of Love upon the temple stair,—
About her feet the lithe green lizards play
In all the drowsy, warm, Sicilian air.

The winds have loosed the fillet from her hair,
Sea winds, salt-lipped, that laugh and seem to say,
“She dreams of Love, upon the temple stair.

“Then let us twine soft fingers, here and there,
Amid the gleaming threads that drift and stray
In all the drowsy, warm, Sicilian air,

“And let us weave of them a subtle snare
To cast about and bind her, as to-day

Here in this room where first we met,
And where we said farewell with tears,
Here, where you swore “Though you forget,
My love shall deeper grow with years,”

Here, where the pictures on the wall,
The very rugs upon the floor,
The smallest objects you recall,—
I am awaiting you once more.

The books that we together read,—
From off their shelves they beckon me.
All here seems living! What is dead?
What is the ghost I fear to see?

Unchanged am I. Did you despise
My love as “small”?—it fills my heart!

Come snow, come hail, come darkness drear;
Brood over earth God's darkest cloud,
While fiercely strikes the lightning's spear
And thunder echoes loud.

I shall not falter in my ways,
He will not stay me save by death,
Through all my pains I'll sing her praise
As long as I have breath.

Love is His lord as well as mine,
In golden rain He once did pour,
Obedient to love's word divine,
And pierced the brazen bower.

A youth was walking in the early hours
Of life, along a garden-alley fair,
When on a sudden, lo! a rose was there,—
Unseen by him before among the flowers
That wove a many-coloured mist of bowers,
And redolent of sweetness made the air.
He came the next day, but would hardly dare
To hope the night's attendant band of showers
Had spared the rose; but lo! the rose was red,
And fragrant, far more fragrant than before,
And fuller petals had unfolded more,
And round about it brighter bloom was shed:

Not through the rose-hung honeyed ways
Of kisses soft and songs and lays
Thou followest me,—
But by far lonely foam-filled bays
Of sorrow's sea.

Through self-denial and the extreme
Repression of love's fiery dream
Thou followest on:
Far heights before us rise and gleam,—
We climb alone.

Not ours the daily chequered life,
Chequered but sweet, of man and wife,
But ours the strange
Wild ways of lonely constant strife
That knows no change.

Not ours to meet save in the bliss

The spring has passed,—the spring-time of my strain,
The spring of thy fair life. Now summer round us
Beams, and the laughing-eyed swift loves have found us
Who gaily tread in his impassioned train.
Thine hair is fragrant with the smell of flowers
Still,—but no flowers of simpler spring remain;
Still art thou beauteous as in those first hours
Of love,—but no lost hours again we gain.

We pass towards perfect summer. Our delight
Is hidden for us among the full-leaved trees,
And 'mid the passion of the August night,

Would God that it were holiday!
Hey derry down, down derry,
That with my Love I might go play;
With woe my heart is weary;
My whole delight is in her sight,
Would God I had her company,
Her company,
Hey derry down, down adown.

My Love is fine, my Love is fair,
Hey derry down, down derry,
No maid with her may well compare,
In Kent or Canterbury;
From me my Love shall never move,
Would God I had her company,
Her company,
Hey derry down, down adown.

To see her laugh, to see her smile,

My heart was made for laughter,
My eyes were made for smiles,
My life was made for living
Upon the Blessed Isles.

My heart is dead with sorrow,
My eyes are red with rue;
And I'd rather weep for you, my love,
Than smile for any but you.

Grieve not, dear Love, although we often part;
—But know that Nature gently doth us sever,
Thereby to train us up with tender art,
—To brook the day when we must part for ever.

For Nature, doubting we should be surprised
—By that sad day, whose dread doth chiefly fear us,
Doth keep us daily schooled and exercised,
—Lest that the fright thereof should overbear us.

Grieve not, dear Love, although we often part;
—But know that Nature gently doth us sever,
Thereby to train us up with tender art,

Why lovely Boy, why fly'st thou mee
That languish in these flames for Thee?
I' me black, tis true: why so is Night,
And Love does in dark Shades delight.
The whole World, doe but close thine Ey,
Will seeme to thee as black as I,
Or op't, & view what a black shade
Is by thine owne faire Body made
That followes thee where ere thou goe;
(O who allow'd would not doe so,)
Let mee for ever dwell so nigh
And thou shalt need no other shade then I.