Leave me, Fear! thy throbs are base,
Trembling for the body's sake.
Come, Love! who dost the spirit raise,
Because for others thou dost wake.
O it is beautiful in death
To hide the shame of human nature's end
In sweet & wary serving of a friend.
Love is true Glory's field, where the last breath
Expires in troops of honorable cares.
The wound of Fate the hero cannot feel
Smit with the heavenlier smart of social zeal.
It draws immortal day
In soot & ashes of our clay.
It is the virtue that enchants it.
It is the face of God that haunts it.

The Power that lifts the leaf above
And sends the root below,
Sustains the heart in brother-love
And makes it heavenward grow.

Those no longer
at a distance
from each other
suffer all the more,
when every slight,
every pain—
not a thing remains

Between our folding lips
God slips
An embryon life, and goes;
And this becomes your rose.
We love, God makes: in our sweet mirth
God spies occasion for a birth.
Then is it His, or is it ours?
I know not—He is fond of flowers.

Sweeter far than lyric rune
Is my baby's cooing tune;
Brighter than the butterflies
Are the gleams within her eyes;
Firmer than an iron band
Serves the zephyr of her hand;
Deeper than the ocean's roll
Sounds her heart-beat in my soul.

The doctors came, they looked, they said:
“She is not ill, let her but lie
A day or two, at ease, in bed,—
There is no thought that she must die.”

But he, her lover, heart like lead;
Watching the life-tides come and go,
Trembled nor could be comforted:
The eyes of love, they know, they know.

The love which is imprinted in my soul
With beauty's seal, and virtue fair disguised,
With inward cries puts up a bitter roll
Of huge complaints that now it is despised.

Thus, thus, the more I love, the wrong the more
Monstrous appears, long truth received late;
Wrong stirs remorsed grief, grief's deadly sore
Unkindness breeds, unkindness fost'reth hate.

But ah! the more I hate, the more I think
Whom I do hate; the more I think on him,
The more his matchless gifts do deeply sink
Into my breast, and loves renewed swim.

When I am easy about love I am easy about life and death:
It makes no difference to me then if the sun does not shine:
I am not worried because affairs go wrong when love goes right:
I reach out and somehow everything falls into the palm of my hand—
All beauty and goodness fall there, all dreaming and hoping fall there:
Though I own no lands and am without fame yet I am as rich as love:
The old jealousies slip away, the grudges and animosities slink out of sight:
Now all life gathers round me—all the people and all the stars gather:

More love, more love; The heavens are blessing, The
angels are calling, O Zion, more love.
If ye love not each other In daily communion, How
can ye love God, Whom ye have not seen?

There are those who love the sunny Southern ocean
With its olive-clad and myrtle-scented shore
And its waves that know no wrestling tides' commotion;
They will dream of its clear waters evermore:
For in Italy—perhaps—Love bent and blessed them,
Smiling angel-like from depths of bluest sky
So they love the land where perfect Love caressed them
More than all lands, and will love it till they die.

Others heard Love whisper through the English larches,
Heard in gentle spring his gentleness of tone;
Saw Love stepping through the fragrant forest-arches,