poems about love

Why, in the brightness of this cheerful morning,
When universal nature whispers rest,
Should darkling thoughts, tumultuous,—no warning,—
Disturb the calm of my unguarded breast?

Vague memories, unhappy dreams, come thronging,
Unquiet ghosts arisen from the tomb
Of my past years; and all the love and longing
My lone heart feels, moan round me in the gloom.

How may it be that solitude can borrow
From earth so beautiful and heaven so clear
These resurrected shapes of causeless sorrow!

With dawn it comes or does not come,
My love that took to stony silence,
Round the walls it goes, begging,
Torn by talons of death whenever
Out of the depths and gnawed by despair
It shouts: O you creature you!
The Ship of Fate moved on,
Sinbad of the Wind never came,
How was it you came when our wells
Are poisoned, where can you have come from?
Did we meet before I came to be?
But love is blind and now I write
On water what you said, our Spring
Completes its journey through disgust
And sorrow from the wilderness,

Beyond the hills the daylight dimly sheds
Some drowsy glances on the restful night;
Thus dreamily the day the darkness weds
And day is darkened, dark receiving sight.
The cuckoo calling in a far-off field
Echoes itself to please another spring,
The cry recalling how the past could yield
Sweet notes and vanish on a swift-flown wing
I love this calmness of the midnight May,
I love the music of the cuckoo's throat,
I love the beauty of that stilly way—
The heavens above—where stars effulgent float:

Love, he is nearer (though the moralist
Of rule and line cry shame on me), more near
To thee and to the heart of thee, be't wist,
Who sins against thee even for the dear
Lack that he hath of thee; than who, chill-wrapt
In thy light-thought-on customed livery,
Keeps all thy laws with formal service apt,
Save that great law to tremble and to be
Shook to his heart-strings if there do but pass
The rumour of thy pinions. Such one is
Thy varlet, guerdoned with the daily mass
That feed on thy remainder-meats of bliss.

my love is building a building
around you, a frail slippery
house, a strong fragile house
(beginning at the singular beginning

of your smile) a skilful uncouth
prison, a precise clumsy
prison (building that and this into Thus,
Around the reckless magic of your mouth)

my love is building a magic, a discrete
tower of magic and (as i guess)

when Farmer Death (whom fairies hate) shall

crumble the mouth-flower fleet
He'll not my tower,
laborious, casual

where the surrounded smile
hangs

Bright things, blest things, to look on you,
Eyes that are in their wane
Grow bright, and hearts at ebb of age
Fill with life's tide again.

And you, not age nor death should touch,
If human love might save;
But stronger is the love that blights,
And gathers to the grave.

We know that you the angels love,—
They love all gentle things—
And often o'er you fondly stoop,
And spread their viewless wings.

And tenderly their starry eyes
Watch you by night and day,
And sweetly as they smile on you,

My noble, lovely, little Peggy,
Let this my First Epistle beg ye,

At dawn of morn, and close of even,
To lift your heart and hands to Heaven.
In double beauty say your prayer:
Our Father first, then Notre Père.
And, dearest child, along the day,
In every thing you do and say,
Obey and please my lord and lady,
So God shall love and angels aid ye.

If to these precepts you attend,
No second letter need I send,
And so I rest your constant friend.

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked any thing.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.

I know the ways of learning; both the head
And pipes that feed the press, and make it run;
What reason hath from nature borrowed,
Or of it self, a good huswife, spun
In laws and policy; what the stars conspire,
What willing nature speaks, what forc'd by fire;

Both th' old discoveries, and the new-found seas,
The stock and surplus, cause and history:
All these stand open, or I have the keys:
Yet I love thee.

I know the ways of honour, what maintains
The quick returns of courtesy and wit:

Sitting by a river side,
Where a silent stream did glide,
Bank'd about with choice flowers,
Such as spring from April showers,
When fair Iris smiling shows
All her riches in her dews;
Thick-leav'd trees so were planted,
As nor art nor nature wanted,
Bordering all the brook with shade,
As if Venus there had made,
By Flora's wile, a curious bower,
To dally with her paramour;
At this current as I gaz'd,
Eyes intrapt, mind amaz'd,
I might see in my ken
Such a flame as fireth men,
Such a fire as doth fry