Oh Night of Love

Oh night of love, your rapt ecstatic hours
Were mine, the languor of their pale perfume
Pervades me, kisses in a fountain-fire,
Surround me,—fetter and consume.

Oh night of love, your groves of strange content
Project a thralldom over coming days;
Exalted, derelict, and blind I wend
Unmindfully along Life's misty ways.

Invocation

The winter moon is beaming
From her clouded throne on high,
The stars are dimly gleaming
From the borders of the sky,
While wand'ring on the lonely beach,
I list the ocean's roar,
And mark the crested billows reach
The far extended shore;
Or watch the dim discover'd sail
Beyond the breaker's foam,
The laden ship with prosp'rous gale,
Advancing to her home:—
Joyful as she the land espies,
And speeds along the sea,
So joyfully my spirit flies,
To seek its rest with thee.

Home Is Where There Is One to Love Us

Home's not merely four square walls,
Though with pictures hung and gilded;
Home is where Affection calls--
Filled with shrines the Hearth had builded!
Home! Go watch the faithful dove,
Sailing 'neath the heaven above us.
Home is where there's one to love!
Home is where there's one to love us.

Home's not merely roof and room,
It needs something to endear it;
Home is where the heart can bloom,
Where there's some kind lip to cheer it!
What is home with none to meet,
None to welcome, none to greet us?

Whom do you love, she said, when you look out

Whom do you love, she said, when you look out
So far beyond my eyes as our eyes meet?
Is she so like and yet unlike you doubt
If I'm the counterfeit or she's the cheat?
Or is she some one that I never was?
Or what I was and shall not be again?
Back of your eyes I think her image has
Not only longing and much more than pain.

She never had another's face but this,
He laughed and touched her cheek. She moved as you,
And spoke upon your tongue and used your kiss,
And knew the mysteries your wisdom knew,

But she was both,—she was both loved and love

But she was both,—she was both loved and love,
She was desire and the thing desired,
She was Troy flame and she was Troy town fired,
She was hope realized and the hope thereof:
Her slender body was the instant bloom
Of lovely secrecies; the shadowed swell
Of her small breast was beauty sensible;
Her stormy hair wore wonder like a plume.

Away, his sense of her was like the sense
Of moonlight under the smooth vague of sleep;
Near, at her touch, her beauty's imminence
Was like a wave that falters at the leap

And he had used love's dream of love before

And he had used love's dream of love before,
Love that hopes nothing but the hope it is,
Love that has no utterance in a kiss,
Nor eloquence in flesh, but would adore
Its perfect adoration, its desire,
As musingly in wonder as the moon
Stares back into a brook whose running rune
Burns with the imaged argent of moon-fire.

Sometimes in music when the phrase would close
And yet yearn on in silence, unfulfilled,
Once in the imperfection of a rose,
Once in an ape's face marvellously stilled,
He had imagined the perfected thing,

When Will Love Come?

Some find love late, some find him soon,
—Some with the rose in May,
Some with the nightingale in June,
—And some when skies are gray;
Love comes to some with smiling eyes,
—And comes with tears to some;
For some Love sings, for some Love sighs,
—For some Love's lips are dumb.

How will you come to me, fair Love?
—Will you come late or soon?
With sad or smiling skies above,
—By light of sun or moon?
Will you be sad, will you be sweet,
—Sing, sigh, Love, or be dumb?
Will it be summer when we meet,

Lost for a Rose's Sake

I laved my hands,
By the water side;
With the willow leaves
My hands I dried.

The nightingale sung
On the bough of the tree;
Sing, sweet nightingale,
It is well with thee.

Thou hast heart's delight,
I have sad heart's sorrow
For a false, false maid
That will wed to-morrow.

'Tis all for a rose,
That I gave her not,
And I would that it grew
In the garden plot.

And I would the rose-tree
Were still to set,
That my love Marie
Might love me yet.

Epitaph on Prince Henry

Lo, where he shineth yonder,
A fixed star in heaven,
Whose motion here came under
None of the planets seven.
If that the Moon should tender
The Sun her love, and marry,
They both could not engender
So sweet a star as Harry.

Lo, where he shineth yonder,
A fixed star in heaven,
Whose motion here came under
None of the planets seven.
If that the Moon should tender
The Sun her love, and marry,
They both could not engender
So sweet a star as Harry.

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