love poems for her

I.

Soft , oh! how softly sleeping
Shadow'd by beauty she lies,
Dreams, as of rapture, creeping,
Smile by smile, over her eyes;
Lips, oh! how sweetly parting,
As if the delight between,
With its own warm pulses starting,
Strove to go forth and be seen.

II.

'Tis Love, born newly of fancy,
Brushing her heart with his plume,
That wakes, with his necromancy,

Love on the earth alit,
Come to be Lord of it;
Looked round and laughed with glee,
Noble my empery!
Straight ere that laugh was done
Sprang forth the royal sun,
Pouring out golden shine
Over the realm divine.

Came then a lovely may,
Dazzling the new-born day,
Wreathing her golden hair
With the red roses there,
Laughing with sunny eyes
Up to the sunny skies,
Moving so light and free
To her own minstrelsy.

Love with swift rapture cried,
Dear Life, thou art my bride!

He may have been a worthy wight
Who mocked the sun with candle-light,

As seeking in that foolish way,
An honest man in open day;

But who has heard of one of these
Revealed unto Diogenes?

I think his lanthorn lacked alone
Some honest motions of his own!

The man with little love shall find
But little loving in mankind!

And one of feeble honor can
By no means find an honest man!

To win the Indies' wealth, lay out
The Indies' worth, or thereabout.

Fair in her fair days rose Rocca Paolina:
With cannon did her buttressed ramparts bristle!
Pope Paul the third planned her one morn between a
Text of Bembo and his Latin Missal.

" Too freely do my sheep who pasture under
Perugia's precipices stray from me:
For chastening, God the Father hath the thunder,
And I, His vicar, will use artillery.

" Coelo tonantem Horace sings, and louder
Than the stormwind God speaketh in His rage:
" Return, my sheep, " I 'll cry with shot and powder,

If our ffoes you may be termed,
gentle ffoes wee haue you ffound;
w i th our cittye you haue woon o u r harts eche one;
then to yo u r Country beare away tha t is yo u r owne. "

" Rest you still, most gallant Ladye!
rest you still, & weepe noe more!
of ffaire Louers there is plenty;
Spaine doth yeelde a wonderous store. "
" Spanyards ffraught w i th iclousye wee often ffind,
but Englishmen through all the world are counted Kind.

On HIMSELF.

Hither Loves and Myrtles bring;
Tender Harvest of the Spring:
Soft and cool, my Limbs recline;
While I give my Self to Wine.
Love (his flowing Mantle bound,
With a Sedge , his Neck around)
Love Himself shall fill the Bowl:
For Life , hastening to the Goal ,
Passes with a rapid Trill;
Swift, as whirls the Chariot Wheel:
And, our Bones to moulder lain,
We, a little Dust, remain.

Why Ointments on my Stone bestow?
Vainly, why, the Ground bestrow?
Ointments on Me Living shed;

On LOVE.

One midnight when the bear did stand
A-level with Bootes ' hand,
And, with their labour sore oppress'd,
The race of men were lay'd to rest,
Then to my doors, at unawares,
Came Love , and tried to force the bars.

Who thus assails my doors, I cry'd?
Who breaks my slumbers? Love reply'd,
Open: a child alone is here!
A little child! — — you need not fear;
Here through the moonless night I stray,
And, drench'd in rain, have lost my way.

If I were king my pipe should be premier.
The skies of time and chance are seldom clear;
We would inform them all with azure weather.
Delight alone would need to shed a tear,
For dream and deed should war no more together.

Art should aspire, yet ugliness be dear;
Beauty, the shaft, should speed with wit for feather;
And love, sweet love, should never-fall to sere
If I were king.

But politics should find no harbour near;
The Philistine should dread to slip his tether;
Tobacco should be duty free, and beer;

All that's not love is the dearth of my days,
The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit,
The temple in times without prayer, without praise,
The altar unset and the candle unlit.

Let me survive not the lovable sway
Of early desire, nor see when it goes
The courts of Life's abbey in ivied decay,
Whence sometime sweet anthems and incense arose.

The delicate hues of its sevenfold rings
The rainbow outlives not; their yellow and blue
The butterfly sees not dissolve from his wings,

When Love w i th vnconfined wings
hovers w i thin my gates,
& my divine Althea brings
to whisp er at my grates,

when I lye tangled in her heere
& fettered w i th her eye,
the burds tha t wanton in the ayre
enioyes such Lybertye.

When, Lynett like confined, I
w i th shriller note shall sing
the mercy, goodnesse, maiestye
& glory of my kinge,