love poem

Love and Sleep



Lying asleep between the strokes of night
I saw my love lean over my sad bed,
Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head,
Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,
Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,
But perfect-coloured without white or red.
And her lips opened amorously, and said -
I wist not what, saving one word - Delight.

Surprised by joy — impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport--Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind--
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?--That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,

What does it mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease,
No man, woman, or child alive could please
Me now. And yet I almost dare to laugh
Because I sit and frame an epitaph--
"Here lies all that no one loved of him
And that loved no one." Then in a trice that whim
Has wearied. But, though I am like a river
At fall of evening when it seems that never
Has the sun lighted it or warmed it, while
Cross breezes cut the surface to a file,
This heart, some fraction of me, hapily

For every hour that thou wilt spare me now,
I will allow,
Usurious God of Love, twenty to thee,
When with my brown, my grey hairs equal be;
Till then, Love, let my body reign, and let
Me travel, sojourn, snatch, plot, have, forget,
Resume my last year's relict: think that yet
We had never met.

Let me think any rival's letter mine,
And at next nine
Keep midnight's promise; mistake by the way
The maid, and tell the Lady of that delay;
Only let me love none, no, not the sport;

1 It is not, Celia, in our power
2 To say how long our love will last;
3 It may be we within this hour
4 May lose those joys we now do taste:
5 The blessed, that immortal be,
6 From change in love are only free.

7 Then, since we mortal lovers are,
8 Ask not how long our love will last;
9 But while it does, let us take care
10 Each minute be with pleasure past.
11 Were it not madness to deny
12 To live, because w'are sure to die?

1 If she be not as kind as fair,
2 But peevish and unhandy,
3 Leave her, she's only worth the care
4 Of some spruce Jack-a-dandy.
5 I would not have thee such an ass,
6 Hadst thou ne'er so much leisure,
7 To sigh and whine for such a lass
8 Whose pride's above her pleasure.

1 Rose-cheek'd Laura, come,
2 Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty's
3 Silent music, either other
4 Sweetly gracing.

5 Lovely forms do flow
6 From concent divinely framed;
7 Heav'n is music, and thy beauty's
8 Birth is heavenly.

9 These dull notes we sing
10 Discords need for helps to grace them;
11 Only beauty purely loving
12 Knows no discord,

13 But still moves delight,

1 Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet;
2 Haste you, sad notes, fall at her flying feet.
3 There, wrapp'd in cloud of sorrow, pity move,
4 And tell the ravisher of my soul I perish for her love:
5 But if she scorns my never-ceasing pain,
6 Then burst with sighing in her sight and ne'er return again.

7 All that I sung still to her praise did tend,
8 Still she was first; still she my songs did end;
9 Yet she my love and music both doth fly,

1 If love now reigned as it hath been
2 And were rewarded as it hath sin,

3 Noble men then would sure ensearch
4 All ways whereby they might it reach,

5 But envy reigneth with such disdain
6 And causeth lovers outwardly to refrain,

7 Which puts them to more and more
8 Inwardly most grievous and sore.

9 The fault in whom I cannot set,
10 But let them tell which love doth get--

11 To lovers I put now sure this case: