poems about love

O love, how utterly am I bereaved
By Time, who sucks the honey of our days,
Sets sickle to our Aprils, and betrays
To killing winter all the sun achieved!
Our parted spirits are perplexed and grieved
Severed by cold, and change that never stays;
And what the clock, and what the season says
Is rumour neither valued nor believed.

Thus absence chills us to apparent death
And withers up our virtue, but together
We grow beyond vagaries of the weather
And make a summer of our mingled breath

My thoughts thou hast supported without rest,
My tyred body here hath laine opprest
With love, and feare: yet be thou ever blest;
Spring, prosper, last; I am alone unblest.

If thou wouldst be a master, learn the way:
Little thou knowest of that sacred joy,
Which haunts the deep of night, and fills the day,
And makes a warrior of a dreaming boy.

To love the austerity of sea and stars:
To love the multitudes of mighty towns:
To love the hardness of thy prison bars:
This must thou know, or lose the eternal crowns.

Bear to be last, though the world's fools were first;
Endure the wealth and wage, thy service brings:
Wages enough, heart's hunger and soul's thirst,

Love's a flower, 'tis born and broken,
Plucked apace, and hugged apart;
Evening comes, it clings—poor token—
Dead and dry, on lover's heart.

Love's the rhyme of a summer minute
Woven close like hum of flies;
Sob of wind, and meaning in it
Dies away, as summer dies.

Love's a shimmery morning bubble
Puffed all gay from pipe of noon;
Spun aloft on breath of trouble—
Bursts in air—is gone—too soon!

As many songs of love there are
As green leaves in Asummer wood,
While yet the autumn is afar
And the swift rains are good.

And some leaves fall in any storm
And some dance lightly East and West;
But some—ah, some cling soft and warm
About a nest.

Love peruse me, seeke, and finde
How each corner of my minde
Is a twine
Woven to shine.
Not a Webb ill made, foule fram'd,
Bastard not by Father nam'd,
Such in me
Cannot bee.
Deare behold me, you shall see
Faith the Hive, and love the Bee,
Which doe bring.
Gaine and sting.
Pray desect me, sinewes, vaines,
Hold, and loves life in those gaines;
Lying bare
To despaire,
When you thus anotamise
All my body, my heart prise;
Being true
Just to you.
Close the Truncke, embalme the Chest,

Love lett mee live, ore lett mee dye,
Use mee nott wurse then poorest fly
Who finds some comfort, while alone
I live, and waste in moane;

I have noe shrouding place from woe,
The billowes beare my overthrowe,
And sands they cover in disgrace
Of my loves truest face.

Wretch sayth the sea heer stay, and drowne:
Can you nott feare her curstest frowne?
Alas she chides us that you stay,
After her just denay,

She is the Goddesse sole of Love;
How dare you mortall thus to move?

Love growne proud with victory,
Seekes by sleights to conquer me,
Painted showes he thinks can bind
His commands in womens mind.
Love but glories in fond loving,
I most joy in not removing.

Love a word, a looke, a smile,
In these shapes can some beguile,
But he some new way must move
To make me a vassell prove.
Love but &

Love must all his shadowes leave
Or himselfe he will deceive,
Who loves not the perfect skie,
More then clouds that wanton flie.
Love but &

I

The rugged forhead that with grave foresight
Welds kingdomes causes and affaires of state,
My looser rimes (I wote) doth sharply wite,
For praising love, as I have done of late,
And magnifying lovers deare debate;
By which fraile youth is oft to follie led,
Through false allurement of that pleasing baite,
That better were in vertues discipled,
Then with vaine poemes weeds to have their fancies fed.
II

Such ones ill judge of love, that cannot love,
Ne in their frosen hearts feele kindly flame:

The joy you say the Heavens in motion trie
Is not for change, but for their constancy.
Should they stand still, their change you then might move,
And serve your turne in praise of fickle love.
That pleasure is not but diversified,
Plainely makes proofe your youth, not judgement tried.
The Sunnes renewing course, yet is not new,
Since tis but one set course he doth pursue,
And though it faigned be, that he hath chang'd,
'Twas when he from his royall seate hath raing'd:
His glorious splendor, free from such a staine,