poems about love

Love and my selfe (beleeve me) on a day
At childish Push-pin (for our sport) did play:
I put, he pusht, and heedless of my skin,
Love prickt my finger with a golden pin:
Since which, it festers so, that I can prove
'T was but a trick to poyson me with love:
Little the wound was; greater was the smart;
The finger bled, but burnt was all my heart.

I like your love the best of all:
It does not ask things of me for love's sake,
It does not demand things of me for love's sake,
It does not send me away for love's sake,
It does not call me to itself for love's sake,
It acknowledges no debts incurred for love's sake,
It places no debts upon my heart for love's sake,
It just lets me alone, just lets love alone, for love's sake,
It just loves and lets everything else take care of itself, for love's sake:
Yes, I like your love the best of all.

I like your love the best of all:

The morning spreads great wings of light
O'er sea and sod,
And breathes to the awakening soul
The sense of God.

The air is one that bends the flower
Or storms the oak,
So art and love are one in all
Us human folk.

Some praise the looks, and others praise the locks,
Of their fair queens in love, with curious words.
Some laud the breast where love his treasure locks,
All like the eye that life and love affords.
But none of these frail beauties and unstable
Shall make my pen riot in pompous style;
More greater gifts shall my grave muse enable,
Whereat severer brows shall never smile.
I praise her honey-sweeter eloquence,
Which from the fountain of true wisdom floweth,
Her modest mien that matcheth excellence,

O, pleasing thoughts, apprentices of love,
Fore-runners of desire, sweet mithridates
The poison of my sorrows to remove,
With whom my hopes and fear full oft debates;
Enrich yourselves and me by your self riches,
Which are the thoughts you spend on heaven-bred beauty,
Rouse you my muse beyond our poets' pitches,
And working wonders, yet say all is duty;
Use you no eaglets' eyes, nor phoenix' feathers,
To tower the heaven from whence heaven's wonder sallies.
For why? Your sun sings sweetly to her weathers,

Love guards the roses of thy lips
And flies about them like a bee;
If I approach he forward skips,
And if I kiss he stingeth me.

Love in thine eyes doth build his bower
And sleeps within their pretty shine;
And if I look the boy will lour
And from their orbs shoot shafts divine.

Love works thy heart within his fire
And in my tears doth firm the same;
And if I tempt it will retire,
And of my plaints doth make a game.

Love, let me cull her choicest flowers;
And pity me, and calm her eye;

I hope and fear, I pray and hold my peace,
Now freeze my thoughts and straight they fry again,
I now admire and straight my wonders cease,
I loose my bonds and yet myself restrain;
This likes me most that leaves me discontent,
My courage serves and yet my heart doth fail,
My will doth climb whereas my hopes are spent,
I laugh at love, yet when he comes I quail;
The more I strive, the duller bide I still,
I would be thralled, and yet I freedom love,
I would redress, yet hourly feed mine ill,
I would repine, and dare not once reprove;

Ah, lovely youth! thy tender lay
May not thy gentle life prolong:
See'st thou yon nightingale a prey?
The fierce hawk hovering o'er his song?

His little heart is large with love:
He sweetly hails his evening star,
And Fate's more pointed arrows move,
Insidious, from his eye afar.

And now two longsome years are past
In luxury of lonely pain—
The lovely mourner, found at last,
To Moray's halls is borne again.

Yet has she left one object dear,
That wears Love's sunny eye of joy—
Is Nithisdale reviving here?
Or is it but a shepherd's boy?

By Carron's side, a shepherd's boy,
He binds his vale-flowers with the reed;
He wears Love's sunny eye of joy,
And birth he little seems to heed.

Say wherefore is't that Damon flys,
From the Weake charms of Cloras Eyes?
Weake Charms they surely needs must bee,
Which till this Houre he could not see,
Nor is she now more Faire, than when
Theire first acquaintance, they began,
When the Gay Shepherd Laugh'd at love,
Swore it no Gen'rous Heart could move,
Disease of Fools, Fond Lunacie,
To Cloras Face oft would he cry,
For mee your Friendship but bestow,
(Friendship, the onely Good below)
Faire shepherdess, Ile ask no more,
Since more to give, exceeds your Pow'r,