It's gone, the yearning in my heart
You're longtime now forgotten;
The days are crawling, torn apart,
All pale, and cold, and rotten.
Yet love, be it one tender ray,
Life into them would pour.
But gone's my longing, gone away
And I can love no more.
It was not only once, it will go this way,
In our fight, which is deaf and destroying:
As it happened before, you rebuffed me today –
To return, like a slave, by the morning.
Therefore, don’t be stressed, my inimical friend,
My friend - enemy, caught by black laces,
If the moans of love will be moans of pain
And the kisses will leave bloody traces.
It nods and curtseys and recovers
When the wind blows above,
The nettle on the graves of lovers
That hanged themselves for love.
The nettle nods, the wind blows over,
The man, he does not move,
The lover of the grave, the lover
That hanged himself for love.
(You say) It is not love, it is madness
My madness may be the cause of your fame
Sever not my relationship with you
If nothing then be my enemy
What is the meaning of notoriety in meeting me
If not in public court meet me alone
I am not my own enemy
So what if the stranger is in love with you
Whatever you are, it is due to your own being
If this not known then it is ignorance
Life though fleets like a lightening flash
Yet it is abundant Time to be in love
I do not want debate on the sustenance of love
Come when the nights are bright with stars
Or when the moon is mellow;
Come when the sun his golden bars
Drops on the hay-field yellow.
Come in the twilight soft and gray,
Come in the night or come in the day,
Come, O love, whene'er you may,
And you are welcome, welcome.
You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,
You are soft as the nesting dove.
Come to my heart and bring it rest
As the bird flies home to its welcome nest.
Come when my heart is full of grief
Or when my heart is merry;
Sark, fairer than aught in the world that the lit skies cover,
Laughs inly behind her cliffs, and the seafarers mark
As a shrine where the sunlight serves, though the blown clouds hover,
Sark.
We mourn, for love of a song that outsang the lark,
That nought so lovely beholden of Sirmio's lover
Made glad in Propontis the flight of his Pontic bark.
Here earth lies lordly, triumphal as heaven is above her,
And splendid and strange as the sea that upbears as an ark,
For Dr Henry L Bowditch
With warning hand I mark Time's rapid
flight
From life's glad morning to it's solemn
night;
Yet through thee dear God's love, I also
show
There's Light above me by the shade
below.
Venus, when her son was lost,
Cried him up and down the coast,
In hamlets, palaces, and parks,
And told the truant by his marks,
Golden curls, and quiver, and bow;—
This befell long ago.
Time and tide are strangely changed,
Men and manners much deranged;
None will now find Cupid latent
By this foolish antique patent.
He came late along the waste,
Shod like a traveller for haste,
With malice dared me to proclaim him,
That the maids and boys might name him.
Boy no more, he wears all coats,
Never again the sight of her?
Never her winsome smile
Shall light the path of my journeying
O'er many a weary mile?
Never again shall her soft voice come
To cheer me all the while?
O Thou, who hearest from above,
Tell me, is this the price of love?
Never again the touch of her lips?
Never her dark, brown eyes
Shall shine on me with the dancing joy
Of stars in the summer skies?
Never again shall my song be aught
Save minor chords of sighs?
O Thou, who hearest from above,
Is there a bitter pang for love removed,
O God! The dead love doth not cost more tears
Than the alive, the loving, the beloved—
Not yet, not yet beyond all hopes and fears!
Would I were laid
Under the shade
Of the calm grave, and the long grass of years,—
That love might die with sorrow:—I am sorrow;
And she, that loves me tenderest, doth press
Most poison from my cruel lips, and borrow
Only new anguish from the old caress;
Oh, this world's grief
Hath no relief
