poems about love

I.
'BESIDE the nuptial curtain bright'
The Bard of Eden sings,
'Young Love his constant lamp will light,
'And wave his purple wings.'
But rain-drops from the clouds of care
May bid that lamp be dim,
And the boy Love will pout and swear
'Tis then no place for him.

II
So mused the lovely Mrs. Dash;
'Tis wrong to mention names;
When for her surly husband's cash
She urged in vain her claims.
I want a little money, dear,
'For Vandervoort and Flandin,
Their bill, which now has run a year,

Love is the Lord whom I obey,
Whose will transported I perform;
The centre of my rest, my stay,
Love's all in all to me, myself a worm.

For uncreated charms I burn,
Oppressed by slavish fear no more,
For One in whom I may discern,
E'en when he frowns, a sweetness I adore.

He little loves him who complains,
And finds him rigorous and severe;
His heart is sordid, and he feigns,
Though loud in boasting of a soul sincere.

Love causes grief, but 'tis to move
And stimulate the slumbering mind;

Do not believe, my dearest, when I say
That I no longer love you.
When the tide ebbs do not believe the sea -
It will return anew.

Already I long for you, and passion fills me,
I yield my freedom thus to you once more.
Already the waves return with shouts and glee
To fill again that same belovèd shore.

Do not ask, my love, for the love we had before:
You existed, I told myself, so all existence shone,
Grief for me was you; the world’s grief was far.
Spring was ever renewed in your face:
Beyond your eyes, what could the world hold?
Had I won you, Fate’s head would hang, defeated.
Yet all this was not so, I merely wished it so.
The world knows sorrows other than those of love,
Pleasures beyond those of romance:
The dread dark spell of countless centuries
Woven with silk and satin and gold braocade,

I ask my heart, "Do I love thee?"
But how can I e'er forget
The feelings of joy and rapture
That thrilled me when first we met?
The memory of each glad meeting
Is treasured within my heart,
Which has well-nigh ceased its beating,
Since, in sorrow, we had to part.

Each night, as I seek my pillow,
I murmur a prayer for thee,
I breathe thy name, as the sunbeams
Flash red on the eastern sea.
Thy spirit is still the beacon
That guides me 'mid care and strife,
And there 'twill remain for ever,

The storm-dances of gulls, the barking game of seals,
Over and under the ocean…
Divinely superfluous beauty
Rules the games, presides over destinies, makes trees grow
And hills tower, waves fall.
The incredible beauty of joy
Stars with fire the joining of lips, O let our loves too
Be joined, there is not a maiden
Burns and thirsts for love
More than my blood for you, by the shore of seals while the wings
Weave like a web in the air
Divinely superfluous beauty.

Ye noble self like the divine doctor!
All the illness of Cupid-stricken Rā dhā
can be cured very well
only by the ambrosia
of your loving embrace.
If you do not make her
free from this grief so far,
O Dear Upendra!
Really very cruel
more than the thunderbolt you are..

Since for me now you have no warmth to spare
I sense I must adopt a sane and spare

Philosophy to ease a restless state
Fuelled by this uncaring. It will state

A very meagre truth: love like the rest
Of our emotions, sometimes needs a rest.

Happiness, too, no doubt; and so, why even
Hope that 'the course of true love' could run even?

Were you to cross the world, my dear,
To work or love or fight,
I could be calm and wistful here,
And close my eyes at night.

It were a sweet and gallant pain
To be a sea apart;
But, oh, to have you down the lane
Is bitter to my heart.

A pleasant ill is this disease of love,
And 'twere not ill to sketch its likeness thus:
When sharp cold spreads through all the æther clear,
And children seize a crystal icicle,
At first they firmly hold their new-found joy;
But in the end the melting mass nor cares
To slip away, nor is it good to keep:
So those that love, the self-same strong desire
Now leads to action, now to idleness.