romantic poems

Strict as my conscience itself, thou noticest all mine offences:
Therefore I love thee as well as—mine own conscience, at least.

Home's not merely four square walls,
Though with pictures hung and gilded;
Home is where Affection calls--
Filled with shrines the Hearth had builded!
Home! Go watch the faithful dove,
Sailing 'neath the heaven above us.
Home is where there's one to love!
Home is where there's one to love us.

Home's not merely roof and room,
It needs something to endear it;
Home is where the heart can bloom,
Where there's some kind lip to cheer it!
What is home with none to meet,
None to welcome, none to greet us?

Whom do you love, she said, when you look out
So far beyond my eyes as our eyes meet?
Is she so like and yet unlike you doubt
If I'm the counterfeit or she's the cheat?
Or is she some one that I never was?
Or what I was and shall not be again?
Back of your eyes I think her image has
Not only longing and much more than pain.

She never had another's face but this,
He laughed and touched her cheek. She moved as you,
And spoke upon your tongue and used your kiss,
And knew the mysteries your wisdom knew,

But she was both,—she was both loved and love,
She was desire and the thing desired,
She was Troy flame and she was Troy town fired,
She was hope realized and the hope thereof:
Her slender body was the instant bloom
Of lovely secrecies; the shadowed swell
Of her small breast was beauty sensible;
Her stormy hair wore wonder like a plume.

Away, his sense of her was like the sense
Of moonlight under the smooth vague of sleep;
Near, at her touch, her beauty's imminence
Was like a wave that falters at the leap

And he had used love's dream of love before,
Love that hopes nothing but the hope it is,
Love that has no utterance in a kiss,
Nor eloquence in flesh, but would adore
Its perfect adoration, its desire,
As musingly in wonder as the moon
Stares back into a brook whose running rune
Burns with the imaged argent of moon-fire.

Sometimes in music when the phrase would close
And yet yearn on in silence, unfulfilled,
Once in the imperfection of a rose,
Once in an ape's face marvellously stilled,
He had imagined the perfected thing,

Some find love late, some find him soon,
—Some with the rose in May,
Some with the nightingale in June,
—And some when skies are gray;
Love comes to some with smiling eyes,
—And comes with tears to some;
For some Love sings, for some Love sighs,
—For some Love's lips are dumb.

How will you come to me, fair Love?
—Will you come late or soon?
With sad or smiling skies above,
—By light of sun or moon?
Will you be sad, will you be sweet,
—Sing, sigh, Love, or be dumb?
Will it be summer when we meet,

I laved my hands,
By the water side;
With the willow leaves
My hands I dried.

The nightingale sung
On the bough of the tree;
Sing, sweet nightingale,
It is well with thee.

Thou hast heart's delight,
I have sad heart's sorrow
For a false, false maid
That will wed to-morrow.

'Tis all for a rose,
That I gave her not,
And I would that it grew
In the garden plot.

And I would the rose-tree
Were still to set,
That my love Marie
Might love me yet.

Lo, where he shineth yonder,
A fixed star in heaven,
Whose motion here came under
None of the planets seven.
If that the Moon should tender
The Sun her love, and marry,
They both could not engender
So sweet a star as Harry.

Lo, where he shineth yonder,
A fixed star in heaven,
Whose motion here came under
None of the planets seven.
If that the Moon should tender
The Sun her love, and marry,
They both could not engender
So sweet a star as Harry.

Thy heart is in the upper world, where fleet the chamois bounds,
Thy heart is where the mountain-fir shakes to the torrent-sounds;
And where the snow-peaks gleam like stars, through the stillness of the air,
And where the Lauwine's' peal is heard—Hunter! thy heart is there!

I know thou lov'st me well, dear friend! but better, better far,
Thou lov'st that high and haughty life, with rocks and storms at war;
In the green sunny vales with me, thy spirit would but pine,
And yet I will be thine, my love! and yet I will be thine!

With thy true love I have more wealth
Than Charon's piled-up bank doth hold;
Where he makes kings lay down their crowns
And lifelong misers leave their gold.

Without thy love I've no more wealth
Than seen upon that other shore;
That cold, bare bank he rows them to—
Those kings and misers made so poor.