poems about love

Often between the midnight and the morn
I wake and see the angels round my bed;
Then fall asleep again, well-comforted.
I wait not now till that clear dawn be born
Shall lead my feet (O Love, thine eyes are worn

With watching) where her feet have late been led;
Nor lie awake, saying the words she said—
(Her yellow hair.—Have ye seen yellow corn?)
I fall asleep and dream and quite forget,
For here in heaven I know a new love’s birth


Which casteth out all memory. And yet

Remembering most the old, eternal days,
I cannot curse our life—thy life and mine;
But now, perceiving its complex design,
I go on my intolerable ways,
And, blaming me the more, give thee more praise.

—I dared to think that such a love as thine
Were bounded by each little curve and line
My hand might limn!—by my blind yeas and nays!
And now I say not where thy paths shall be,
Or who shall go or come at thy least call;


Only I know that when thy footsteps fall
Across the silences that cover me,

No, I shall not say why it is that I love you—
Why do you ask me, save for vanity?
Surely you would not have me, like a mirror,
Say 'yes,—your hair curls darkly back from the temples,
Your mouth has a humorous, tremulous, half-shy sweetness,
Your eyes are April grey. . . .with jonquils in them?'
No, if I tell at all, I shall tell in silence . . .
I'll say—my childhood broke through chords of music
—Or were they chords of sun?—wherein fell shadows,
Or silences; I rose through seas of sunlight;

Do but consider this small dust
Here running in the glass,
By atoms moved;
Could you believe that this
The body was
Of one that loved?
And in his mistress' flame, playing like a fly,
Turned to cinders by her eye?
Yes; and in death, as life, unblessed,
To have't expressed,
Even ashes of lovers find no rest.

HERE we came when love was young.
Now that love is old,
Shall we leave the floor unswept
And the hearth acold?
Here the hill-wind in the dusk,
Wandering to and fro,
Moves the moonflowers, like a ghost
Of the long ago.
Here from every doorway looks
A remembered face,
Every sill and panel wears
A familiar grace.
Let the windows smile again
To the morning light,
And the door stand open wide
When the moon is bright.
Let the breeze of twilight blow
Through the silent hall,

This was our house. To this we came
Lighted by love with torch aflame,
And in this chamber, door locked fast,
I held you to my heart at last.

This was our house. In this we knew
The worst that Time and Fate can do.
You left the room bare, wide the door;
You did not love me any more.

Where once the kind warm curtain hung
The spider's ghostly cloth is flung;
The beetle and the woodlouse creep
Where once I loved your lovely sleep.

Yet so the vanished spell endures,

Ever since You were the home of love for me, my love has lived where You have lived. Because of You, I have delighted in the wrath of my enemies; let them be, let them torment the one whom You tormented. It was from You that they learned their wrath, and I love them, for they hound the wounded one whom You struck down. Ever since You despised me, I have despised myself, for I will not honour what You despise. So be it, until Your anger has passed, and again You will redeem
Your own possession, which You once redeemed.**

**From the bondage of Egypt.

Thinking him a man,
I stretched out my right hand towards him.

As soon as I kept my hand on his hand,
my hand got wet with a horrid smell.

I washed my hand many times
with ashes
and with sweet-smelling soaps.

I went bathing many times in the Ganges
and in all the oceans.

Even I bathed my whole body
with sacredness, hatred and love.

Yet that horrid smell has not vanished at all
from my right hand and from my whole body.

Alas! now I think of that hand-

XI
Belovèd, those who moan of love's brief day
Shall find but little grace with me, I guess,
Who know too well this passion's tenderness
To deem that it shall lightly pass away,
A moment's interlude in life's dull play;
Though many loves have lingered to distress,
So shall not ours, sweet Lady, ne'ertheless,
But deepen with us till both heads be grey.
For perfect love is like a fair green plant,
That fades not with its blossoms, but lives on,

I have been so great a lover: filled in days
So proudly with the splendor of Love's praise,
The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,
Desire illimitable, and still content,
And all dear names men use, to cheat despair,
For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear
Our hearts at random down the dark of life.
Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife
Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far,
My night shall be remembered for a star
That outshone all the suns of all men's days.