poems about love

THE SAME CONTINUED
Give me thy soul, Juliet, give me thy soul!
I am a bitter sea, which drinketh in
The sweetness of all waters, and so thine.
Thou, like a river, pure and swift and full
And freighted with the wealth of many lands,
With hopes, and fears, and death and life, dost roll
Against the troubled ocean of my sin.
Thou doubtest not, though on these desert sands
The billows surge against thee black with brine,
Unwearied. For thy love is fixed and even
And bears thee onward, and thy faith is whole.

ASKING FOR HER HEART
Give me thy heart, Juliet, give me thy heart!
I have a need of it, an absolute need,
Because my own heart has thus long been dead.
I live but by thy life. The very smart
Of this new pain which has been born of thee
Is thine, thy own great pleasure's counterpart.
I stand before thee naked. Clothe thou me.
Bring out a robe,--thy truth, thy chastity.
Put rings upon my fingers,--honour's meed.
For thou canst give, nor ever reck the cost,
Being the royal creature that thou art,

ON THE NATURE OF LOVE
You ask my love. What shall my love then be ?
A hope, an aspiration, a desire?
The soul's eternal charter writ in fire
Upon the earth, the heavens, and the sea?
You ask my love. The carnal mystery
Of a soft hand, of finger--tips that press,
Of eyes that kindle and of lips that kiss,
Of sweet things known to thee and only thee?
You ask my love. What love can be more sweet
Than hope or pleasure? Yet we love in vain.
The soul is more than joy, the life than meat.

THE SAME CONTINUED
I think there never was a dearer woman,
A better, kinder, truer than you were,
A gentler spirit more divinely human
Than yours with your sweet melancholy air
Of tender gaiety, which seemed like care,
And in your voice a sob as of distress
At the world's ways, its sin and its despair,
Being yourself all strange to wickedness.
Now you are neither gentle, kind, nor good,
And you have sorrows of your own to grieve,
And in your mirth compassion has no mood;

THE SAME CONTINUED
I see you, Juliet, still, with your straw hat
Loaded with vines, and with your dear pale face,
On which those thirty years so lightly sat,
And the white outline of your muslin dress.
You wore a little fichu trimmed with lace
And crossed in front, as was the fashion then,
Bound at your waist with a broad band or sash,
All white and fresh and virginally plain.
There was a sound of shouting far away
Down in the valley, as they called to us,
And you, with hands clasped seeming still to pray

THE SAME CONTINUED
Thrice happy fools! What wisdom shall we learn
In this world or the next, if next there be,
More deep, more full, more worthy our concern
Than that first word of folly taught us? We
Had suddenly grown silent. I could see
Your cheek had lost a little of its hue,
And your lips trembled, and beseechingly
Your blue eyes turned to mine, and well I knew
Your woman's instinct had divined my speech,
The meaning of a word so lightly spoken.
The word was a confession, clear to each,

THE SAME CONTINUED
Do you remember how I laughed at you
In the Beaulieu woods, and how I made my peace?
It was your thirtieth birthday, and you threw
Stones like a school--girl at the chestnut trees.
The heavens were light above us and the breeze.
Your Corydon and all the merry crew
Had wandered to a distance, busier bees
Than we, who cared not where the hazels grew.
We were alone at last. I had been teasing
You with the burden of years left behind.
You were too fair to find my wit displeasing,

THE SAME CONTINUED
A ``woman with a past.'' What happier omen
Could heart desire for mistress or for friend?
Phoenix of friends, and most divine of women,
Skilled in all fence to venture or defend
And with love's science at your fingers' end,
No tears to vex, no ignorance to bore,
A fancy ripe, the zest which sorrows lend!--
I would to God we had not met before!
--I would to God! and yet to God I would
That we had never met. To see you thus
Is grief and wounds and poison to my blood.

THE SAME CONTINUED
Yet we shall live without love, as some live
Without their limbs, their senses, maimed or deaf.
We even shall forget love, and shall thrive
And prosper and grow fat upon our grief.
You are consoled already more than half,
And wear your sorrow lightly. I will boast
No longer the refusal of relief
Than as a decent mourner of hopes crossed.
We yet shall laugh, and laughter is more loud
When following tears. The men who drive a hearse
Are not the least lighthearted of the crowd.

THE SAME CONTINUED
I do not love you. To have said this once
Had seemed to both of us a monstrous lie,
An idle boast, love's last extravagance
Or the mere paradox of vanity.
Now it is true and yet more hideously
More strangely monstrous. I, no less than you,
Here own at length the worm which cannot die,
The burden of a pain for ever new.
This is the ``pang of loss,'' the bitterest
Which Hell can give. We are shut out from Heaven
And never more shall look upon Love's face,
Being with those who perish unforgiven.