romantic poems

I .

The Lily watched the stately Rose
And envied her her bloom
" I wait, " she said, " in white repose,
I might be in my tomb
The Rose is sweet, the Rose is red,
Her lover is the Sun:
But I — I might as well be dead!
I'm loved and sought of none!

I never shall be happy,
I never shall be red!

" Oh, well I love the red red gold,
So sang the maiden fair:
" I love to twine in fold on fold
My bright soft golden hair
In spring the golden daffodils
Shine out in field and lane,
And when red gold the coffer fills
Why should a girl complain —
And when red gold the coffer fills
Why should a girl complain, complain,
Why should a girl complain? "

There came a lover bold and strong
To worship and to dare;
His voice of gold sang passion's song,
He stroked the golden hair.

O artist dreaming thus thy life away,
There is a higher life than thou canst guess.
Art thou a poet? sweet love answers, “nay.”
Was Christ a poet? woman answers, “yes.”

The highest poethood is ever this:
To love as Christ loved, and to save the race.
Not to spend wild years, seeking kiss on kiss,
But to draw forth the soul in woman's face.

To aid the weary, and to lift the low:
To show God's pity in the human sphere:
Besought by sorrow, never to say “no”
To lend the helpless heart a ready ear:

Thine English eyes are sweeter than the day,
More beautiful than light at early morn,
Tenderet than stars, or than the tender grey
Of even when the moon's slow car is borne
Upward by grey far propping waves forlorn:
Not Beatrice, in Italy the queenly,
Flashed love, or mirth, or summer-lightning scorn,
So sweetly, or so roselike and serenely.

The English breezes crowned thy young fair head,
And kissed thy lips, and made them roses red:
The English meadow-sweet purloined thy breath,

Are we forgotten, when our spirits pass
The silent doors of all-absorbing death?
Yea, do we mingle with the flowers and grass,
And draw no more sweet loving human breath?
Lovers have trodden love's mystic path before us,
And other fair-souled lovers will succeed —
Will mark the same blue skies that once shone o'er us,
Or haply with the same deep sorrows bleed.

Oh, is there any resting place, a haven
For love's wings sent forth like the pilot raven
To pierce the shadows, pioneer the tomb?

I.

" Far out where waves are breaking,
Where never song-bird sings,
My soul would fly, forsaking
All flowers and inland things
I am weary of the bowers
Where summer's heart is won;
I am weary of the flowers;
I am weary of the sun:
Where only star-rays sunder
The darkness, I would be;
At rest, while wild waves thunder
The anthems of the sea. "

II.

Youth's meadows all were bountiful with gold;
The sweet seas all were laughing in their glee,
Responsive on the beach the breakers rolled.
Assiduous sang the birds in every tree
Chanting the wedding, love, of you and me;
For through the realms of nature was it told,
Yea, signalized through earth eternally
And through the azure heavens wide and free,
And o'er the yellow furze-crowned breezy wold
Where hand in hand we wandered, love, of old,
Brushing the heather-sprays that reached the knee

I lost her, and the passionate angel came
With heavenly glitter in her glowing wings,
And words of comfort, and a crown like flame:
Such change, such gradual recompence time brings,
Touching, transforming many an early aim.
Through heaven we passed together, and we saw
With sighs of rapture and with trembling awe
Love's perfect goal: we conquered love and fame.

In heaven we dwelt together for long years
And plucked white wondrous blossoms for a token,
To bear away if e'er the dream was broken,

No mother owns a son. — Their lives are drawn
Together for a time. O'er valley and lawn
Of this our earth they pass.
But as they older grow, their spheres divide:
One seeks by choice the ice-blue mountain-side:
The other loves the daisied sunlit grass.

Many have lived before. Christ had derived
From many a star wherein his soul had lived
Soul-learning, lessons high:
Perhaps had suffered for another race;
Others perhaps had loved the royal face;
Another cross perhaps had seen him die.

And in that desert of void endless thought,
Like a white shining flower my love shall be;
A flower to bloom round and encourage me,
With tender petals marvellously wrought.
This gift, far rarer than all gifts I sought,
Shall be mine own: its utter purity
Shall make that desert like some grassy sea,
With lilies 'twixt the grass-blades twined and caught.

This one sweet flower amid the desert sands
Of hard fierce thought, a silver bloom, expands,
In token that one woman did not fear,