I love, alas! yet am not loved,
For cruel she to pity is not moved.
My constant love with scorn she ill rewardeth,
Only my sighs a little she regardeth:
Yet more and more the quenchless fire increaseth,
Which, to my greater torment, never ceaseth.
I love you, goddesses of singing,
But your invasion, so fine,
That tremor of the spirit thrilling,
Is a herald of the future pines.
The Muses' love and Fortune's striking
Are one. I'm silent. I'm afraid:
My fingers, casting on the light strings,
Might here awake these storms and lightnings
In which my sleeping fate was laid.
And, with strong torments ever wound,
I leave the Muse, who favours me,
And say: "Till tomorrow, sounds,
Let the day expire quietly."
I love you with my every breath,
I make you songs like thunder birds,
Give you my life—you give me death
And stab me with your dreadful words.
You laid my head against your heart
Last night, my lips upon your breast
And now you say that we must part
For fear your heart should be oppressed:
You cannot go against the world
For my sake only—thus your phrase,
But I—God’s beauty is unfurled
In your gold hair, and in your gaze
The wisdom of God’s bride—each soul
I love you means I love all.
I love you means I love both great and small.
Love begins at home and home means you.
You are ever old, you are ever new.
I love you
like dipping bread into salt and eating
Like waking up at night with high fever
and drinking water, with the tap in my mouth
Like unwrapping the heavy box from the postman
with no clue what it is
fluttering, happy, doubtful
I love you
like flying over the sea in a plane for the first time
Like something moves inside me
when it gets dark softly in Istanbul
I love you
Like thanking God that we live.
I love to see
Her looking up at me,
Stretched on a bed
In her pink dressing gown,
Her arms above her head,
Her hair all down.
I love to see
Her smiling up at me.
I Love this white and slender body,
These limbs that answer Love's caresses,
Passionate eyes, and forehead covered
With heavy waves of thick, black tresses.
You are the very one I've searched for
In many lands, in every weather.
You are my sort; you understand me;
As equals we can talk together.
In me you've found the man you care for.
And, for a while, you'll richly pay me
With kindness, kisses and endearments--
And then, as usual, you'll betray me.
I loved thee; and perchance until this moment
Within my breast is smouldering still the fire!
Yet I would spare thy pain the least renewal,
Nothing shall rouse again the old desire!
I loved thee with a silent desperation--
Now timid, now with jealousy brought low,
I loved devoutly,--with such deep devotion--
Ah may God grant another love thee so!
Another Translation:
I loved you once: perhaps that love has yet
To die down thoroughly within my soul;
But let it not dismay you any longer;
I love the Tsarskoselsky Gardens
Late in the fall when, in soft haze
Enfolded, as in sleep's embrace
They lie... The cold's breath slowly hardens,
And on the dull glass of the lake,
Clad in that same fine haze, white-winged
And strangely languid visions linger
And seem bemused, but half-awake.
The skies are grey, by not a star lit...
The evening's shadows onward press
And softly lick the steps dark scarlet
Of Catherine's lofty palaces.
Then dark the gardens grow and dreamy,
I love the Forest;--I could dwell among
That silent people, till my thoughts up--grew
In nobly--ordered form, as to my view
Rose the succession of that lofty throng:--
The mellow footstep on a ground of leaves
Formed by the slow decay of nume'rous years,--
The couch of moss, whose growth alone appears,
Beneath the fir's inhospitable eaves,--
The chirp and flutter of some single bird,--
The rustle in the brake,--what precious store
Of joys have these on Poets' hearts conferred?
