poems about love

O love is like an untamed steed!--
So hot of heart and wild of speed,
And with fierce freedom so in love,
The desert is not vast enough,
With all its leagues of glimmering sands,
To pasture it! Ah, that my hands
Were more than human in their strength,
That my deft lariat at length
Might safely noose this splendid thing
That so defies all conquering!
Ho! but to see it whirl and reel--
The sands spurt forward--and to feel
The quivering tension of the thong
That throned me high, with shriek and song!

Where she sleeps, no moonlight shines
No pale beam unbidden creeps.
Darkest shade the place enshrines
Where she sleeps.

Like a diamond in the deeps
Of the rich unopened mines
There her lovely rest she keeps.

Though the jealous dark confines
All her beauty, Love's heart leaps.
His unerring thought divines
Where she sleeps.

Beloved, you drove me distracted,
But you could also save me now !
Come by surprise, and fill thirsty cups
With the wine of love.

My broken heart lies captive
In the garden of love.
Couldn't you spare an odd moment
Just to watch the fun ?

A beggar of love stands at your door,
Asking for your charity;
Wouldn't a few words from you shame
The world's choicest sweets ?

Your coming caused a frenzied bloom
In Nishat and Shalamar.

Beloved! I've made for you many a lovely thing -
Wine cups fashioned out of jessamine petals,

Enchanting tales woven from your short breath or two
(which is all your speech to hint a yes or no) ,

Pearls strapped from rain drops coming down
When my ardour soared up the sky as a cloud,

Fields of flowers smiling where it was desolate land -
Made desolate, in fact, by these very hands of mine!

I came to taste life's nectar but, enslaved by illusion,
Wove my own thoughts as chains to fetter me.

Before the glory of your love
The beauty of the world is bowed
In adoration, and to prove
Your praises every Truth is proud:

Each silent witness testifies
Your wonder by its native worth
And dumbly its delight denies
That your wild music may have birth:

Only this madman cannot keep
Your peace, but flings his bursting heart
Forth to red battle,—while they weep
Your music who have held apart.

In the dark many bird voices call,

The trees and the springs murmur noisily,

In the clouds a rose-colored glow sounds

Like early love's distress. The night blues away -

With shy hands the twilight softly polishes

The love lair, feverishly stirred up,

And lets the drunkenness of languished kisses end

In dreams, smiling and felt half-awake.

THE gull's image and the gull
Meet upon the water
All day I have thought of her
There is nothing left of that year
(There is sere-grass
Salt colored)
We have annulled it with
Salt
We have galled it clean to the clay with that one autumn
The hedge-rows keep the rubbish and the leaves
There is nothing left of that year in our lives but the leaves of it
As though it had not been at all
As though the love the love and the life altered
Even ourselves are as strangers in these thoughts

Life is up and takes the morning;
Why should love still lie abed?
Lo! the charms of slumber scorning,
Tramps the troop that must be led.
Thousands come from hill and valley
Loud the town with clamour fill;
Why must then their leader dally,
Couched with Cleopatra still?
Life's awake — let Duty waken!
Love's a snare at such a time,
When Mars' harness should be taken
And the hearts of heroes chime.
Let the leader leave the lady!
Cupid is not lord of these,
Now the War-god ranks them ready

FROM the Desert I come to thee
On a stallion shod with fire;
And the winds are left behind
In the speed of my desire.
Under thy window I stand,
And the midnight hears my cry:
I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgment
Book unfold!

Look from thy window and see
My passion and my pain;
I lie on the sands below,
And I faint in thy disdain.
Let the night-winds touch thy brow

If questioning would make us wise
No eyes would ever gaze in eyes;
If all our tale were told in speech
No mouths would wander each to each.

Were spirits free from mortal mesh
And love not bound in hearts of flesh
No aching breasts would yearn to meet
And find their ecstasy complete.

For who is there that lives and knows
The secret powers by which he grows?
Were knowledge all, what were our need
To thrill and faint and sweetly bleed?

Then seek not, sweet, the "If" and "Why"