poems about love

True! Man loves what he has, and hopes for all that he has not;
None but rich minds love, only the indigent ask.

O SWEETEST maid, in other days
The troubadours had sung your praise,
And knights had died and joyed to die
To win a smile as you passed by,
While lord and lackey stood at gaze.

What wonder that the task dismays
To wreathe your brow with modern bays,
Or rhyming tricks for you to try,
O sweetest maid!

For you should be those loftier lays
Of which from far the echo strays,
In matchless, murmurous melody
That dies in Love's divinest sigh—
Still Love's strong will my rhyme obeys,
O sweetest maid!

Unto no body my woman saith she had rather a wife bee
then to my self, not though Jove grew a suter of hers.
These be her woordes, but a womans wordes to a love that is eger
in wyndes or waters stremes do require to be writt.

The torch of Love dispels the gloom
Of life, and animates the tomb;
But never let it idly flare
On gazers in the open air,
Nor turn it quite away from one
To whom it serves for moon and sun,
And who alike in night or day
Without it could not find his way.

Like lance and shield
set to fend off
arrows shot
from a spindle-wood bow—
that is how ready
my heart is
to pursue
the way of love.

Neither tip
nor base
of the bow
of spindlewood
does my body know—
as on love's
paths still untried
my heart is

Love , since it is thy will that I return
'Neath her usurped control
Who is thou know'st how beautiful and proud;
Enlighten thou her heart, so bidding burn
Thy flame within her soul
That she rejoice not when my cry is loud.
Be thou but once endowed
With sense of the new peace, and of this fire,
And of the scorn wherewith I am despised,
And wherefore death is my most fierce desire;
And then thou'lt be apprised
Of all. So if thou slay me afterward,
Anguish unburthened shall make death less hard.

The poet hath to sing though no man hears,
And though the dreary years
Bring nought of sympathy:
He hath the sun and sea.

The poet hath to love though hope be dead
And garlandless his head:
Though no man take his part,
He hath the rose's heart.

The poet hath to sing though all his words
Be as the notes of birds
Flung to the bitter breeze:
Yet hath he the blue seas.

The poet hath to love though all his brain
Be torn with lonely pain:
Devoid of love's delight,
He hath the sweet wild night.

As in a porch of stars we stand; the night
Throbs through us, O Love, with its worlds of light,
And mingles us in glory of one breath,
One infinite ignorance of Time and Death
Behold, I am dyed in you, and you in me;
We are the colours of infinity,
We are two flames that are one flame,
We are but Love, and have no name
But did we part, O Love, if we could part,
The very blood were taken from my heart,
Time and Death would ride the night
Then, and ended were all light,
The stream of stars would fall like stone

Love eternal, when He planned
Fronded fern and forest tree,
Laid His meadows on the land,
Floated cloud-reefs o'er the sea,
Dreamed the wonder of your eyes
In the arches of the skies.

All the purport of your powers,
Love, the great Adventurer knew,
When He reared His granite towers,
Leaning stairs up to the blue,
Spreading o'er each lonely crest
Snowy coverlets of rest.

When of old the singing spheres
Waked the young earth with their strain,
Long ere yet the tidal years