romantic poems

For now, love thou, I rede, Christ, as I thee tell:
And with Angels take thy stead; that joy look thou nought sell!
In earth thou hate, I rede, all that thy love may fell:
For Love is stalworth as the death, Love is hard as hell.

Love is a light burden, Love gladdeth young and old;
Love is without pine, as lovers have me told;
Love is a ghostly wine, that makes men big and bold:
Of Love shall he nothing tyne that it in heart will hold.

But fleshly love shall fare as doth the flower in May

Long have I dreamed of love's adventure,
Long have I sung of love's desire,
Songs that I sang with red lips laughing,
Hot with the flame of borrowed fire.

Now I have felt your arms about me,
Now that my lips on your lips have lain,
Mute with the memory of your kisses,
How shall I sing of love again?

He was the first to welcome Spring;
Adventurous, he came
To wake the dreaming buds and sing
The crocus into flame.

He loved the morning and the dew;
He loved the sun and rain;
He fashioned lyrics as he flew
With love for their refrain.

Poet of vines and blossoms, he;
Beloved of them all;
The timid leaves upon the tree
Grew bold at his glad call.

He sang the rapture of the hills,
And from the starry height
He brought the melody that fills
The meadows with delight.

“Teach me, love, to be true;
Teach me, love, to love;
Teach me to be pure like you.
It will be more than enough!

“Ah, and in days to come,
Give me, my seraph, too,
A son nobler than I,
A daughter true like you:

“A son to battle the wrong,
To seek and strive for the right;
A beautiful daughter of song,
To point us on to the light!”

The moon is in love with the nightingale,
And the nightingale worships the rose;
But the red rose bleeds for the young and pale
Queen of the garden close.

The young queen turns to a singing clown
Whose lips have a single tune;
She leans to him like a ray bent down. …
But he is in love with the moon.

How much do you love me, a million bushels?
Oh, a lot more than that, Oh, a lot more.

And tomorrow maybe only half a bushel?
Tomorrow maybe not even a half a bushel.

And is this your heart arithmetic?
This is the way the wind measures the weather.

Then heaven I sought, and heaven-high designs:—
The robes of angels glittered o'er my gaze,
And at them I forgot green earthly bays,
The hills of earth, the meadows and the vines,
The blue waves laughing in tumultuous lines,
The glittering ferns that trembled o'er the ways;
Love vanished in a vast seraphic blaze
Of plumes ascending,—reddening all the pines.

The love of earth was changed to love of heaven:
The star of hope was not the star of even
But rather the pale tremulous orb of death:

If we should ever meet again
When many tedious years are past;
When time shall have unbound the chain,
And this sad heart is free at last;
Then shall we meet and look unmoved,
As though we ne'er had met—had loved!
And I shall mark without a tear
How cold and calm thy altered brow;
I shall forget thou once wert dear,
Rememb'ring but thy broken vow!
Rememb'ring that in trusting youth
I loved thee with the purest truth;
That now the fleeting dream is o'er,
And thou canst raise the spell no more!

Love is the way that lovers never know
Who know the shortest way to find their love,
And never turn aside and never go
By vales beneath nor by the hills above,
But running straight to the familiar door
Break sudden in and call their dear by name
And have their wish and so wish nothing more
And neither know nor trouble how they came.

Love is the path that comes to this same ease
Over the summit of the westward hill,
And feels the rolling of the earth and sees
The sun go down and hears the summer still,

This was not love but love's true negative
That spends itself in passion to be spent,
And lives no longer than the wish may live
To waste itself and then is impotent,
And fails not only but confounds in fault
What love most lives upon, the very need,
The lack, the famine, the too thirsty salt,
Till wanting want love has no will to feed.

Yet, in the glut and surfeit of desire
Desire itself was perfected and found,
And fever burned by its consuming fire
Was bare as martyrs' bones beneath the ground.