poems about love

They spake me fair and said: “Forgo this pain,
This grief of love.” They counselled me in vain;
Loving my grief, I count it little gain
With grief to part.

I never thought to give in such meek wise
My heart away to one whose distant eyes
Scorn my salutes, nor see me with surprise
Standing apart.

O hard of heart, give back the life I gave
In greeting to thee,—greet me, thou, and save
Me, weary for thy presence, from the grave,
O hard of heart!

She smiles and smiles, and will not sigh,
While we for hopeless passion die;
Yet she could love, those eyes declare,
Were but men nobler than they are.

Eagerly once her gracious ken
Was turned upon the sons of men;
But light the serious visage grew—
She looked, and smiled, and saw them through.

Our petty souls, our strutting wits,
Our labored, puny passion-fits—
Ah, may she scorn them still, till we
Scorn them as bitterly as she!

Yet show her once, ye heavenly Powers,
One of some worthier race than ours!

I am the first that ever lov'd,
He yet that for the place contends
Against true love so much offends,
That even this way it is prov'd.

For whose affection once is shown,
No longer can the World beguile,
Who see his pennance all the while,
He holds a Torch to make her known.

You are the first were ever lov'd,
And who may think this not so true,
So little knows of love or you,
It need not otherwise be prov'd.

For though the more judicious eyes
May know when Diamonds are right,

Tarry sweete love,
harke how the winds doe murmure at your Flyghte.
See how the trees in order growe,
the coole earth shodoinge belowe;
see the wanton streames how they playe by the banke side.
Then Stay in hope my lighte, my Joye, my life, my soule;
heere may you safe abide.

A WORLD of workers—
Thinkers, builders,
Dreamers, artists,
Writers—workers all;
A vast pulsating host
Of great endeavor—
Working out the Master's plan;
Toiling, sweating,
Grieving—singing,
Playing—resting,
Young or old, weak or strong;
Vainly striving only
Where no love pulsates
From the throbbing Heart of God.

I am not blind—I understand;
I see him loyal, good and wise,
I feel decision in his hand,
I read his honour in his eyes.
Manliest among men is he
With every gift and grace to clothe him;
He never loved a girl but me—
And I—I loathe him!—loathe him!

The other! Ah! I value him
Precisely at his proper rate,
A creature of caprice and whim,
Unstable, weak, importunate.
His thoughts are set on paltry gain—
You only tell me what I see—
I know him selfish, cold and vain;
But, oh! he's all the world to me!

It was my heavenly Father's love
Brought every being forth:
He made the shining worlds above,
And every thing on earth;—

Each lovely flower, the smallest fly,
The sea, the waterfall,
The bright green fields, the clear blue sky;—
'T is God that made them all.

He gave me all my friends, and taught
My heart to love them well;
And he bestowed the power of thought,
And speech, my thoughts to tell.

My father and my mother dear,—
He is their Father too:
He bids me all their precepts hear,

“Lose and love” is love's first art;
So it was with thee and me,
For I first beheld thy heart
On the night I last saw thee.
Pine-woods and mysteries!
Sea-sands and sorrows!
Hearts fluttered by a breeze
That bodes dark morrows, morrows,—
Bodes dark morrows!

Moonlight in sweet overflow
Poured upon the earth and sea!
Lovelight with intenser glow
In the deeps of thee and me!
Clasped hands and silences!
Hearts faint and throbbing!
The weak wind sighing in the trees!
The strong surf sobbing, sobbing,—

You that I loved all my life long,
you are not the one.
You that I followed, my line or path or way,
that I followed singing, and you
earth and air of the world the way went through,
and you who stood around it so it could be
the way, you forests and cities,
you deer and opossums struck by the lonely hunter
and left decaying, you paralyzed obese ones
who sat on a falling porch in a deep green holler
and observed me, your bald dog barking,
as I stumbled past in a hurry along my line,
you are not the one. But you

Though thou, indeed, hast quite forgotten ruth,
Its steadfast truth my heart abandons not;
But still its thought yields service in good part
To that hard heart in thee.

Alas! who hears believes not I am so.
Yet who can know? of very surety, none.
From Love is won a spirit, in some wise,
Which dies perpetually:

And, when at length in that strange ecstasy
The heavy sigh will start,
There rains upon my heart
A love so pure and fine,
That I say: "Lady, I am wholly thine.'