poems about love

Hope is like a harebell trembling from its birth,
Love is like a rose the joy of all the earth;
Faith is like a lily lifted high and white,
Love is like a lovely rose the world's delight;
Harebells and sweet lilies show a thornless growth,
But the rose with all its thorns excels them both.

But yet within life's ocean there are isles
Where for calm sunlit seasons thou mayest be
Safe from the cold arms of the sullen sea,
Press arms divine, and meet diviner smiles.
White hands shall beckon through dim forest-aisles,
And yet a fragrance not of flower or tree
Shall lure thee forth to roam eternally:
The known joy palls, the unknown joy beguiles.

In some fair island under sapphire skies
A woman waits, with queenly lips unkissed
And heart that throbs with unacknowledged flame.

Yet other thanks I owe
To him the guardian Power who guides our way
That every sense was clear when closed the day;
Clear almost as beneath the morning's glow

The eyes that in the far-off days looked down,
Ever with love, on flower and flower,
Growing in love, ne'er failed in power?
Death, having force to slay, could not discrown.

Still were the stars discerned
As clearly as when in years long dead,
Mother, upon thy bridal night they burned:
No tiniest star could veil its golden head.

Deep is the human heart:
When anguish comes, how true friends rally round;
If human love had power, then death discrowned
And forceless would depart.

But human love has power—to this extent,
That the mute frozen horror melts at last;
The pain no human strength can bear is past;
By whom were loving friends who saved me sent?

By whom if not by thee,
Mother, whose care still active from above
Incarnate once is unincarnate love
And perfect ever-present sympathy.

Old enmities give way

And yet I seem to hear the dead sweet voice
Saying, “Blame not overmuch yourselves, my son!
God watched—no evil is done;
Be thou not sad—rejoice!

“Even if the door of life was left ajar
Not through that door came death alone,
Nay, Love came with him,—Love who can atone
For all mistakes and sins in every star.”

Straight from the loves and flowers of sweet midday
My soul has passed. No afternoon
Has intervened, my thought to attune;
With no slow steps the hours have stolen away.

Straight from the sunlit morn
To this most sombre evening-hour
I have been led by some swift Power:—
Is it love that leads, or Fate's resistless scorn?

Something it is to know that in the gloom
A love most sweet abides;
That, when I seek the tomb,
I then shall grasp at once a hand that guides:

That strong and tender aid
Waits in advance. Then, though death's surges swell,
Where thou art, mother, surely it will be well
For me to follow, unafraid.

If day by day I love the dead
With deeper passion, holier power,
May not they likewise feel from hour to hour
Not love's extinction—love's new birth instead?

If I love them the more,
May not they too—if this high gift may be—
Love on, and even purelier than before?
May not they also feel more love for me?

Still, as each year the lilies blow
And gardens grow
Divine with fragrance, as each year the sea
In centuries yet to be

With royal smile puts on anew
Its radiant robes of sunlit blue,
Through all the glory of Nature men will cry,
“Why must our loved ones die?”

This is a helpful thought—
That something wondrous waits
Behind the cloud-girt mystic gates
Of death,—a something each day nearer brought.

“Look forward,” thou didst say,
“To meeting those we love.” Ah! through the strife,
The toil, the cares, of every day,
Mother, the great hope shines, and hallows life.