romantic poems

Neither joy nor sorrow move
The figure at the feet of Love;
Light of breathing life is she,
Spirit of immortality.

Lead me up thy stony stair,
O Spirit, into thy great air!
For his day of pain and tears
Is to man a thousand years.

Herald of blissful summertide come I;
I wander by,
Singing of sweetest things the June day knows,—
Love and the rose.

If, o East wind, o'er the Ares' Plain to pass to thee befall,
Kiss that valley's earth and musky Look thou make thy breath withal.

Selma's stead (to whom an hundred Greetings be each breath from us)
Full thou'lt find of bells a-clamour and of camel-drivers' bawl.

Kiss for me the Loved One's litter And thus humbly to her say,
“For thy sev'rance I consumed am; Come, o dear one, to my call!”

I, who styled the warners' counsel Erst the chirp of the rebeck,
Now have proved enough of chast'ning From estrangement's heavy maul.

Morning's sun
shines through windows draped
in brocade sewn
with coins. Light
breezes move those pure
white silks.

An artful smile: a pair
of lush, curved, crimson
horns.
Lovely eyes: soft
moth-brows fall

Night so
long. Can't get
to sleep. Turn
on my side, and hear
the nightwatch drum.

No reason for it, love,
and yet we met:
it leaves a bitter taste
down in my guts.

So soon. Today, love, we
part. And our re-
union—when
will that time come?

A bright lamp
shines on an empty place,
in sorrow and longing:
not yet, not yet, not

L ESTENYT , lordynges, both elde and yinge,
How this rose began to sprynge;
Swych a rose to myn lykynge
In al this word ne knowe I non.

The aungil came fro hevene tour
To grete Marye with gret honour,
And seyde sche xuld bere the flour
That xulde breke the fyndes bond.

The flour sprong in heye Bedlem,
That is bothe bryht and schen:
The rose is Mary, hevene qwyn,
Out of here bosum the blosme sprong.

The ferste braunche is ful of myht,
That sprong on Crystemesse nyht,

How you haunt me with your eyes!
Still that questioning persistence,
Sad and sweet, across the distance
Of the days of love and laughter,
Those old days of love and lies.

Not reproaching, not reproving,
Only, always, questioning,
Those divinest eyes can bring
Memories of certain summers,
Nights of dreaming, days of loving,

When I loved you, when your kiss,
Shyer than a bird to capture,
Lit a sudden heaven of rapture;
When we neither dreamt that either
Could grow old in heart like this.

My Country, right!
True to the laws of God and man,
Loyal to justice, fair to life,
Spurning the bigot's spiteful ban,
Holding the world in love's wide span,
Foe of fraternal strife.

My Country, wrong?
God grant that love may spare that fate;
But, if she errs, God make us wise,
Humbly her faults to contemplate;
Thus may our meekness make her great,
Worthy in Freedom's eyes.

——My Country, right!
True to the laws of God and man,
Loyal to justice, fair to life,
Spurning the bigot's spiteful ban,

Through all the night I looked upon a face
Bent o'er me in a dream without a word;
Never a flutter nor a breath I heard,
But, ah, the steady eyes were full of grace

And not mere grace alone spoke from those eyes,
—Or else those eyes have done me grievous wrong—
A love was there, sweet, tempered like a song
That floods the soul with splendor and surprise

And all my soul arose, to meet upright
The joy that those can know who taste love's best;
And: “Shine,” I cried, “till all my soul is blest,—