love poem

WAIT God's time, Love,
Wait Our Father's time!
Lovingly, patiently,
Wait God's time!
Clusters green are on the bough;
Canst thou make them ripen now?
Spring must pass, and Summer, too,
Bring its rain, sunshine and dew;
And even Autumn's mellowing frost
May gently come,
Before the vintage-gatherers, Love,
Sing " harvest home! "

Wait God's time, Love,
Wait Our Father's time!
Watchfully, prayerfully,
Wait God's time!
Let not Passion's stormy air

Land of the gentle and brave!
Our love is as wide as thy woe;
It deepens beside every grave
Where the heart of a hero lies low.

Land of the sunniest skies!
Our love glows the more for thy gloom;
Our hearts, by the saddest of ties,
Cling closest to thee in thy doom.

Land where the desolate weep
In a sorrow no voice may console!
Our tears are but streams, making deep
The ocean of love in our soul.

Land where the victor's flag waves,
Where only the dead are free!

A T dawn of day
I kneel, and clasp my hands, and strive to pray:
But all in vain, dear Love, I bend the knee, —
I can but think of thee!


The Chapel bell
Wakes the loud chaunt and organ's rolling swell:
Yet while my lips in cold responses move, —
My heart burns with thy love!


At still midnight,
Once more the soul attempts her heavenward flight:
But God hath fled, nor hears the empty prayer, —
For thou alone art there!


Help me, dear Love!

So Love is dead, the Love we knew of old!
And in the sorrow of our hearts' hushed halls
A lute lies broken and a flower falls;
Love's house stands empty and his hearth lies cold.
Lone in dim places, where sweet vows were told,
In walks grown desolate, by ruined walls
Beauty decays; and on their pedestals
Dreams crumble and th' immortal gods are mold.
Music is slain or sleeps; one voice alone,
One voice awakes, and like a wandering ghost
Haunts all the echoing chambers of the Past —
The voice of Memory, that stills to stone

Darling little woman, just a little line,
Just a little silver word
For that dear gold of thine,
Only a whisper you have so often heard:

Only such a whisper as hidden in a shell
Holds a little breath of all the mighty sea,
But think what a little of all its depth and swell,
And think what a little is this little note of me

" Darling, I love thee, that is all I live for" —
There is the whisper stealing from the shell,
But here is the ocean, O so deep and boundless,
And each little wave with its whisper as well

I

Dear Love, you ask if I be true,
If other women move
The heart that only beats for you
With pulses all of love

Out in the chilly dew one morn
I plucked a wild sweet rose,
A little silver bud new-born
And longing to unclose.

I took it, loving new-born things,
I knew my heart was warm,
" O little silver rose, come in

Dear Heart, this is my book of boyish song,
The changing story of the wandering quest
That found at last its ending in thy breast —
The love it sought and sang astray so long
With wild young heart and happy eager tongue
Much meant it all to me to seek and sing,
Ah, Love, but how much more to-day to bring
This " rhyme that first of all he made when young."

Take it and love it, 'tis the prophecy
For whose poor silver thou hast given me gold;
Yea! those old faces for an hour seemed fair

O MIGHTY Queen, our Lady of the fire,
The light, the music, and the honey, all
Blent in one Power, one passionate Desire
Man calleth Love — " Sweet love," the blessed call — :
I come a sad-eyed suppliant to thy knee,
If thou hast pity, pity grant to me;
If thou hast bounty, here a heart I bring
For all that bounty 'thirst and hungering
O Lady, save thy grace, there is no way
For me, I know, but lonely sorrowing —

If in my soul, dear,
An omen should dwell,
Bidding me pause, ere
I love thee too well;
If the whole circle
Of noble and wise,
With stern forebodings,
Between us should rise; —

I will tell them , dear,
That Love reigns — a King,
Where storms cannot reach him,
And words cannot sting;
He counts it dishonor
His faith to recall;

I

A mile of moonlight and the whispering wood:
A mile of shadow and the odorous lane:
One large, white star above the solitude,
Like one sweet wish: and, laughter after pain,
Wild-roses wistful in a web of rain.

II

No star, no rose, to lesson him and lead;
No woodsman compass of the skies and rocks, —
Tattooed of stars and lichens, — doth love need
To guide him where, among the hollyhocks,