poems about love

Young Spring, with opening flowers,
Was bright'ning vale and lea;
While Love, 'mid budding bowers,
Woke sweet melody:
When by Dee's noble river
I strayed in happy glee,
And left my heart for ever
In fair Banchory.
O Banchory! fair Banchory!
How dear that happy day to me,
I wandered by the banks o' Dee,
And won the flower o' Banchory

How was't that I, a rover,
So reckless and so free,
Became a constant lover
By flowing Dee?
Because, like Spring, my charmer,

Of our love
How can any man know?
The fine lawn
Pillow alone,
If (anything) knows, can know.

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;

Like to a ring without a finger,
Or a bell without a ringer,
Like a horse was never ridden,
Or a feast and no guest bidden,
Like a well without a bucket,
Or a rose if no man pluck it,
Just such as these may she be said
That lives, not loves, but dies a maid.

The ring, if worn, the finger decks;
The bell pulled by the ringer speaks;
The horse does ease if he be ridden;
The feast doth please if guest be bidden;
The bucket draws the water forth;
The rose, when plucked, is still most worth:

When the beauteous Spring I see,
Glad and free,
Making young the sea and earth,
Then the light of day above
And our love
Seem but newly brought to birth.

When the sky of deeper blue
Lights anew
Lands more beautiful and green,
Love, with witching looks for darts,
Wars on hearts,
Winning them for his demesne.

Scattering his arrows dire
Tipped with fire,
He doth bring beneath his sway
Men and birds and beasts for slaves—
And the waves
To his power obeisance pay. . . .

Bend after bend, the long embankment,
lined with fallen flowers;
trees upon the eastern mountain
linked with lovely homes.
In one of them, a man opens a window
to get a better view;
smiling, he points where breezes ripple
the petals on the water.

We give to chivalry a separate age,
An age of fable, minstrel, & romance,
Of joust and joyance, ladies, knights, & lastly
Love the presiding deity of all:
Within whose temple shine the recorded deeds
Of those that dared & died, but soaring Fame
Has votaries no less numerous than Love's.

My Sandy gied to me a ring,
Was a' beset wi' diamonds fine;
But I gied him a far better thing,
I gied my heart in pledge o' his ring.

My Sandy O, my Sandy O,
My bony, bony Sandy O;
Tho' the love that I owe to thee I dare na show,
Yet I love my love in secret my Sandy O.

My Sandy brak a piece o' gowd,
While down his cheeks the saut tears row'd;
He took a hauf and gied it to me,
And I'll keep it till the hour I die.
My Sandy O &c.

They loo na me because I'm poor I' woolen hoes and clouted shoes
For poverty there's little cure But war it ever mine to chuse
I'd chuse the maid i' russet gown And loo's simplicity
Though finer roses bluim in town The kintra maid for me

And I myself wad be na mair Then on[l]ie what I am
mans complaint is sair His breeding na' but sham
Wha' ever tuck me for a knave Wud mar opinions sarely
I've often made a foemans grave And fought for Scotlands Charley

And dear I loo the land o' bruim And the throble bluiming rarely

That Love last long; let it thy first care be
To find a Wife, that is most fit for Thee.
Be She too wealthy, or too poore; be sure,
Love in extreames, can never long endure.