romantic poems

When Love, puffed up with rage of high disdain,
Resolved to make me pattern of his might,
Like foe, whose wits inclined to deadly spite,
Would often kill, to breed more feeling pain;
He would not, armed with beauty, only reign
On those affects which eas'ly yield to sight,
But virtue sets so high, that reason's light,
For all his strife can only bondage gain:
So that I live to pay a mortal fee,
Dead-palsy sick of all my chiefest parts;
Like those whom dreams make ugly monsters see,

Why should I be bound to thee
O my lovely mirtle tree
[Love free love cannot be bound
To any tree that grows on ground]

To a lovely mirtle bound
Blossoms showring all around
[Like to dung upon the ground
Underneath my mirtle bound]
O how sick & weary I
Underneath my mirtle lie

Love to faults is always blind
Always is to joy inclind
[Always] Lawless wingd & unconfind
And breaks all chains from every mind

Deceit to secresy [inclind] confind
[Modest prudish & confind]
Lawful cautious [changeful and] & refind
[Never is to] To every thing but interest blind
[And chains & fetters every mind]
And forges fetters for the mind

Love is the very heart of spring;
Flocks fall to loving on the lea
And wildfowl love upon the wing,
When spring first enters like a sea.

When spring first enters like a sea
Into the heart of everything,
Bestir yourselves religiously,
Incense before love's altar bring.

Incense before love's altar bring,
Flowers from the flowering hawthorn tree,
Flowers from the margin of the spring,
For all the flowers are sweet to see.

Love is the very heart of spring;
When spring first enters like a sea

There where the land of love,
Grown about by fragrant bushes,
Sunken in a winding valley,
Where the clear winds blow
And the shadows come and go,
And the cattle stand and low
And the sheep bells and the linnets
Sing and tinkle musically.
Between the past and the future,
Those two black infinities
Between which our brief life
Flashes a moment and goes out.

O now, although the year be done,
Now, although the love be dead,
Dead and gone;
Hear me, O loved and cherished one,
Give me still the hand that led,

There is a woman on Michigan Boulevard keeps a parrot and goldfish and two white mice.

She used to keep a houseful of girls in kimonos and three pushbuttons on the front door.

Now she is alone with a parrot and goldfish and two white mice . . . but these are some of her thoughts:

The love of a soldier on furlough or a sailor on shore leave burns with a bonfire red and saffron.

The love of an emigrant workman whose wife is a thousand miles away burns with a blue smoke.

The wishes on this child's mouth
Came like snow on marsh cranberries;
The tamarack kept something for her;
The wind is ready to help her shoes.
The north has loved her; she will be
A grandmother feeding geese on frosty
Mornings; she will understand
Early snow on the cranberries
Better and better then.

How many feet ran with sunlight, water, and air?

What little devils shaken of laughter, cramming their little ribs with chuckles,

Fixed this lone red tulip, a woman's mouth of passion kisses, a nun's mouth of sweet thinking, here topping a straight line of green, a pillar stem?

Who hurled this bomb of red caresses? — nodding balloon-film shooting its wireless every fraction of a second these June days:
Love me before I die ;
Love me — love me now .

Body of Jesus taken down from the cross
Carved in ivory by a lover of Christ,
It is a child's handful you are here,
The breadth of a man's finger,
And this ivory loin cloth
Speaks an interspersal in the day's work,
The carver's prayer and whim
And Christ-love.