Short Poems

O lovely hill, whence in the bitter season hangs debate 'twixt art and dubious nature, whose shoulders clad with flowers and grass are spread to the sun which glows and glitters on you, no sooner has he risen on the horizon than you delight to woo your lovely bosom and your leafy brow in your clear lake, even as a beautiful young woman who adorns herself in veil or kirtle at a mirror.

Ah, when will health to my sick heart return!
The good advice I give it does but spurn.
Flung to the winds, 'twill not be borne away,
Cast in the flames, alas, it will not burn.

Rise up, my Marie, youthful slugabed! The gay lark twitters in the sky, the nightingale upon the thorn jargons her amorous complaint!
Up, up, let us go see the pearly grass, your lovely rose-bush crowned with buds, your charming pinks that with so neat a hand you watered yester-eve.
At bedtime by your eyes you vowed to wake this morning earlier than I; but the dawn, so gracious unto maids,
Has sealed your eyelids with a gentle sleep. I come to kiss your eyes and breasts a hundred times to teach you to rise early.

Ladies, reprove me not if I have loved: If I have felt a thousand burning flames, a thousand woes, a thousand gnawing cares: If I have wasted life in tears:
Alas! let not my name be scorned by you. If I have erred, the punishment is here; do not make keener its impetuous point. At any time — remember! — Love,
Without a Vulcan to excuse your ardour, without Adonis' beauty to accuse, may, if he will, make you more amorous,
With far less cause, than I, and with a wilder, stranger love. Beware lest ye become more miserable.

While that mine eyes have tears to shed and can regret past happiness with you: while that my voice, withstanding sighs and sobs, may yet be heard:
While that my hand may pluck the delicate lute-strings to commend your graces: while that my spirit rests content to have no knowledge save of you:
I shall not wish to die. But when mine eyes have ceased to weep, my voice is quenched and my hand impotent,
And my soul cannot show the signs of love in this our mortal sojourn — then may Death darken my serenest day!

I'll hide myself within my song of love,
That I may kiss thee when thou singest it.

My heart would come with you in your departing, lord, if it were yet with me, but Love hath taken it from me with your eyes.
Therefore my sighs will go with you, for they alone are left me, faithful and welcome friends, and my words and my laments; and if you find their escort lacking, then be certain I am dead.

K ISSES

Kisses are like salt water — that I know.
The more you drink the thirstier you grow.

Who shall succour me in my extremest hour when death is tearing me from life, ah! bitter parting! whereat the heart doth tremble and fear?
Mother and sister, no; because fear urges both to grieve with me; and at that time to accept their help does not avail this last and lofty woe.
And then your faithful, kindly guidance that alone knew how to help me will be far off in that so lofty Court.
So I shall lay aside these earthly burdens with naught to comfort me except, at death, the sighing and the calling on your name!

Ah! leave, my lord, in this your flowering age those weighty cares whereby you labour hard with travail and with danger to your life for high rewards, high honours, high emprise.
Amid these hills, these safe and lovely vales and plains where Love invites, let us together spend a life divine and happy till to our eyes at last the sun grows dark.
So many labours and so many toils make life a hard thing; and all these honours in a trice by death return to naught.