love poems for her

I.

Hear you not the merry sound?
Gather to the fairy round,
'Tis the hour, 'tis the hour,
When the gentle signs abound, —
When the bud begins to flower,
When the moon, with placid power,
Soothes and lights the happy ground.

II.

Leap you not to that array,
Purest hearts in pleasant play? —
Would you lose, would you lose,
Aught of such a holiday, —

Here what remaines of him does ly,
Who was the world's epitomy:
Religion's darling, merchants glory,
Men's delight, and vertue's story
Who, though a Prisoner to the Grave,
A glorious freedome once shall have:
Till when no monument is fit,
But what's beyond our Love or Wit.

Never again the sight of her?
Never her winsome smile
Shall light the path of my journeying
O'er many a weary mile?
Never again shall her soft voice come
To cheer me all the while?
O Thou, who hearest from above,
Tell me, is this the price of love?

Never again the touch of her lips?
Never her dark, brown eyes
Shall shine on me with the dancing joy
Of stars in the summer skies?
Never again shall my song be aught
Save minor chords of sighs?
O Thou, who hearest from above,

What love is; how I love; how builders' clay
By love is lit into a golden spending;
How love calls beautiful ghosts back to the day;
How life because of love shall have no ending —
These with the dawn I have begun to sing,
These with the million-budded noon that's rising
Shall be a theme, with love's consent, to bring
My song to some imperishable devising.
And may the petals of this garland fall
On every quarrel, and in fragrance bless
Old friendship; and a little comfort all
The weary loves that walk the wilderness,

I

A T any moment love unheralded
Comes, and is king. Then as, with a fall
Of frost, the buds upon the hawthorn spread
Are withered in untimely burial,
So love, occasion gone, his crown puts by,
And as a beggar walks unfriended ways,
With but remembered beauty to defy
The frozen sorrows of unsceptred days.
Or in that later travelling he comes
Upon a bleak oblivion, and tells
Himself, again, again, forgotten tombs
Are all now that love was, and blindly spells
His royal state of old a glory cursed,

I WOULD no sweeter treasure know
From your dear love than I can give,
And in such peace as you bestow
I pray for you to live.

Star to rejoicing star shall move
And flower on happy flower shall shine,
But all the sorrows of our love, —
Let these be wholly mine.

Yet that is treason. For I bear
No prouder heart than is your own,
And you would scorn the love would share
Delight and grieve alone.

Lovers, who in complaints your selves consume,
And to be happy once, perhaps presume,
Your love & hopes, alike are vain,
Nor will they ever cure your pain.
They that in Love would Joy attain,
Their passion to their power must frame.
Let them enjoy what they can gain,
And never higher aym.

Complaints & Sorrows, from my breast depart,
You think to soften an ungentle heart,
When it not onely wards such blows,

C HRIST , for whose only Love I keep me clean
Among the palaces of Babylon,
I would not Thou should'st reckon me with them
Who miserly would count each golden stone
That flags the street of Thy Jerusalem —
Who, having touched and tasted, heard and seen,

Half-drunken yet from earthly revelries,
Would wipe with flower-wreathed hair Thy bleeding Feet,
Jostling about Thee but to stay the heat
Of pale parched lips in Thy cool chalices.

" Our cups are emptiness — how long? how long

On river banks my love was born,
And cradled 'neath a budding thorn,
Whose flowers never more shall kiss
Lips half so sweet and red as his.
Beneath him lily-islands spread
With broad cool leaves a floating bed:
Around, to meet his opening eyes,
The ripples danced in glad surprise.
I found him there when spring was new,
When winds were soft and skies were blue;
I marvelled not, although he drew
My whole soul to him, for I knew
That he was born to be my king,
And I was only born to sing

I

Pansies for dreams, —
Dead dreams:
Dead, though with dew ashine;
Dead, though they were divine;
Dead, in this hand of mine;
Dreams of the Dawn, —
Soon gone.

II

Roses for love, —
Lost love:
Lost, in an hour of pain;
Lost, mid the heart's blood rain;
Lost, though we smile again;
Love of the Noon, —
O'er soon