Love love to-day, my dear
Love is not always here
Wise maids know how soon grows sere
The greenest leaf of Spring.
But no man knoweth
Whither it goeth
When the wind bloweth
So frail a thing.
Love love, my dear, to-day
If the ship's in the bay
If the bird has come your way
That sings on summer trees.
When his song faileth
And the ship saileth
No voice availeth
To call back these.
TO a woman's wistful heart
In a startled wave of feeling,
Swift and sudden,
Sweeps love's flood in,
Joy with fear in rapture reeling;
Scathe and sorrow, fret and smart,
In one flush of gladness healing;
Life beclouded,
Sorrow shrouded,
As a sunlit world revealing
To a woman's wistful heart!
To a woman's wistful heart,
Warm with hopes that almost frighten.
Love comes singing,
Gladly bringing
To her loneliness a light in.
Pain and shadowed grief depart,
LOVE, love me only,
Love me for ever;
My life’s been lonely,
A joyless endeavour.
Though earth were heaven,
I in it for ever,
Of thee bereaven—
I’d love again never.
When blooming spring
Arrays the laughing fields in green,
Then flowers in open air are seen,
And warbling birds are heard to sing,
Almighty love
Doth sweetly move
All nature through;
Then tell me, Chloe, why are you
Averse thereto;
When blooming charms
Invite your lover's circling arms?
O be no longer coy
..................... to love and share of joy.
What shall a man remember
In days when he is old,
And Life is a dying ember,
And Fame a story told?
Power—that came to leave him?
Wealth—to the wild waves blown?
Fame—that came to deceive him?
Ah, no! Sweet Love alone!
Honour, and Wealth, and Power
May all like dreams depart—
But Love is a fadeless flower
Whose roots are in the heart.
Not the soft sighs of vernal gales,
The fragrance of the flowery vales,
The murmurs of the crystal rill,
The vocal grove, the verdant hill;
Not all their charms, though all unite,
Can touch my bosom with delight.
Not all the gems on India's shore,
Not all Peru's unbounded store,
Not all the power, nor all the fame,
That heroes, kings, or poets claim;
Nor knowledge which the learn'd approve,
To form one wish my soul can move.
Yet Nature's charms allure my eyes,
The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction
the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.
Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human--
looks out of the heart
burning with purity--
for the burden of life
is love,
but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
FOR her gait, if she be walking;
Be she sitting, I desire her
For her state's sake; and admire her
For her wit if she be talking;
Gait and state and wit approve her;
For which all and each I love her.
Be she sullen, I commend her
For a modest. Be she merry,
For a kind one her prefer I.
Briefly, everything doth lend her
So much grace, and so approve her,
That for everything I love her.
LADIES, though to your conquering eyes
Love owes his chiefest victories,
And borrows those bright arms from you
With which he does the world subdue,
Yet you yourselves are not above
The empire nor the griefs of love.
Then rack not lovers with disdain,
Lest Love on you revenge their pain:
You are not free because you're fair:
The Boy did not his Mother spare.
Beauty 's but an offensive dart:
It is no armour for the heart.
If I had only loved your flesh
And careless damned your soul to Hell,
I might have laughed and loved afresh,
And loved as lightly and as well,
And little more to tell.
But since to clasp your soul I strove,
(That mountebank, that fugitive)
Anrl poured the river of my love
Through meshes that, like Danae's sieve,
Drained all I had to give,
Now nightly by the tamarisks
I pace, and watch the risen moon
Litter the sea with silver disks;
And pray of night one only boon:
