poems about love

Down in the valley,
Valley so low,
Hang your head over,
Hear the train blow.

Hear the train blow, love,
Hear the train blow,
Hang your head over,
Hear the train blow.

If you don't love me,
Love whom you please,
But throw your arms round me,
Give my heart ease.

Step right up to me,
Before it's too late.
Throw your arms round me,
Feel my heart break.

I'll write you a letter,
Only three lines:
"Answer my question,
Will you be mine?'

Go build me a castle,

You say this world's dire need is love,
But O, in this be not misled;
Your hope must fiercely shine above
An epicure's indulgent bed.

Better the fiercest hatred born
Than that amœban death in life
That waits, with liquid eyes forlorn,
A happiness exempt from strife:

That octopus whose filthy arms
Would clasp the world to feed its ease:
That siren whose lascivious charms
Are bent her sickly lust to please.

Love stands upon the mountain height
And bids you strain your keenest nerve

You ask, my soul, that this our mutual love
In fondness, as duration, might excel:
Great gods direct that she but constant prove,
And that she speaks but true, who speaks so well!
Then, gently bound in friendship's holy tie,
We'll both together live, together die!

Think'st thou, I'd rail at her I prize,
The nymph that's dearer than these eyes?
I ne'er had any cause, I vow!
Or, if I had, my ardent love
Too strong an obstacle would prove——
But Tappo's sland'rous; so art thou!

Tho' I hate, yet I love!—you'll perhaps ask me, how?
I can't tell; but I'm vext, and I feel that I do.

No nymph, amid the much-lov'd few,
Is lov'd, as thou art lov'd by me:
No love was e'er so fond, so true,
As my fond love, sweet maid, for thee!

Yes, e'en thy faults, bewitching fair!
With such delights my soul possess;
That whether faithless, or sincere,
I cannot love thee more, nor less!

My nymph averr'd, that mine alone
She'd be, and Jove himself despise;
Tho' courted to partake his throne,
And reign the empress of the skies!

Thus did the flatt'rer fondly swear;
But what, alas, are woman's vows?
Fit to be written but on air,
Or on the stream that swiftly flows!

I was the Widow McFarlane,
Weaver of carpets for all the village.
And I pity you still at the loom of life,
You who are singing to the shuttle
And lovingly watching the work of your hands,
If you reach the day of hate, of terrible truth.
For the cloth of life is woven, you know,
To a pattern hidden under the loom—
A pattern you never see!
And you weave high-hearted, singing, singing,
You guard the threads of love and friendship
For noble figures in gold and purple.
And long after other eyes can see

A chaplain in the army,
A chaplain in the prisons,
An exhorter in Spoon River,
Drunk with divinity, Spoon River—
Yet bringing poor Eliza Johnson to shame,
And myself to scorn and wretchedness.
But why will you never see that love of women,
And even love of wine,
Are the stimulants by which the soul, hungering for divinity,
Reaches the ecstatic vision
And sees the celestial outposts?
Only after many trials for strength,
Only when all stimulants fail,
Does the aspiring soul
By its own sheer power
Find the divine

There is something about
Death Like love itself?
If with some one with whom you have known passion
And the glow of youthful love,
You also, after years of life
Together, feel the sinking of the fire
And thus fade away together,
Gradually, faintly, delicately,
As it were in each other's arms,
Passing from the familiar room—
That is a power of unison between souls
Like love itself!