romantic poems

A LAS ! that men must see
Love, before Death!
Else they content might be
With their short breath;
Aye, glad, when the pale sun
Showed restless Day was done,
And endless Rest begun.

Glad, when with strong, cool hand
Death clasped their own,
And with a strange command
Hushed every moan;
Glad to have finished pain,
And labor wrought in vain,
Blurred by Sin's deepening stain.

But Love's insistent voice
Bids Self to flee —
" Live that I may rejoice,
Live on, for me! "

Adored, invalid autumn, you will
die when the hurricane
blows in the rose
parks, when the snow will have come
among orchards

Poor autumn,
die in the whiteness and richness of ripe
fruit and snow
At the top of the sky hawks
glide and hover
over silly young nymphs
with short green hair
who have never loved

On the far edges of wood the stags
have belled And oh season, season, I
love your dins
Fruits falling unpicked, the wind
and the woods that weep all of their

The definition of love in many languages
Quaintly establishes
Identities of episodes
And makes the parallel
Of myth colloquial.

But, untranslatable,
Love remains
A future in brains.
Speech invents memory
Where there has been
Neither oblivion nor history.
And we remembering forget,
Mistake the future for the past,
Worrying fast
Back to a long ago
Not yet to-morrow.

A, a, a, a,
Yet I love wherso I go.

In all this warld nis a merier life
Than is a yong man withouten a wife,
For he may liven withouten strife
In every place wherso he go.

In every place he is loved over all
Among maidens gret and small,
In daunsing, in pipinge, and renning at the ball,
In every place wherso he go.

They lat light be husbondmen
Whan they at the ball rene;
They cast hir love to yong men
In every place wherso they go.

Than sey maides, " Farwell, Jacke,

Gainesville, Florida

An empire of moss,
dead yellow, and carapace:
that was the season
of gnats, amyl nitrate, and goddamn
rain; of the gator in the fake lake rolling

his silverish eyes;
of vice; of Erotica,
give it up and let
me have my way. And the gin-soaked dread
that an acronym was festering inside.

Love was a doorknob
statement, a breakneck goodbye —
and the walk of shame

I must up and do, the bells are ringing;
And oh! I have lost my senses quite!
The spring and a pair of lovely eyes
Have leagued them against my heart for spite.

The spring and a pair of lovely eyes
Tempt me to folly, and folly's ruing!
I think that the roses and nightingales
Are deep in the plot for my undoing.

So sweet with spring the night and warm,
That flowers are peeping through;
My heart must guard it well from harm,
Or it will love anew.

But which of all the flowers dear
Is like to be the snarer?
The nightingales are singing clear,
" The lily; so beware her! "

In my heart there's music low,
Lovely bells are chiming;
Little song, swell out and go
Springward with your rhyming.

To the bowers that house the flowers
Hasten for the meeting.
If you chance upon a rose,
Say, I send her greeting.

The lovely eyes of the spring-sweet night
Look down and heal my pain:
" Has Love abased thee with his might,
O Love will raise again. "

And Philomela on the lime
Now sweetly sings her sadness;
The music's goal is in my soul,
That hears, and swells for gladness.

Like a maiden shy for gladness,
Leaves unfold them in the wood;
" Gentle Spring, I give thee greeting! "
Laughs the sun in merry mood.

'Tis, O nightingale! thy music
'Plaining blissful in the grove;
Long and sweet thy notes are sobbing,
And thy song is utter love!