love poems

Ay, she was as Madonna to
The tawny, lawless, faithful few
Who touched her hand and knew her soul:
She drew them, drew them as the pole
Points all things to itself.

She drew
Men upward as a moon of spring
High wheeling, vast and bosom-full,
Half clad in clouds and white as wool,
Draws all the strong seas following.

Yet still she moved as sad, as lone
As that same moon that leans above,
And seems to search high heaven through

TO A RCHILOCHUS

Pause , and scan well Archilochus, the bard of elder days,
By east and west
Alike's confest
The mighty lyrist's praise.
Delian Apollo loved him well, and well the sister choir:
His songs were fraught
With subtle thought,
And matchless was his lyre.

FOR A Tripod E RECTED BY D AMOTELES TO B ACCHUS

T HE precentor Damoteles, Bacchus, exalts
Your tripod, and, sweetest of deities, you
He was champion of men, if his boyhood had faults
And he ever loved honour and seemliness too.

IDYLL XXXI

L OVES

A H for this the most accursed, unendurable of ills!
Nigh two months a fevered fancy for a maid my bosom fills
Fair she is, as other damsels: but for what the simplest swain
Claims from the demurest maiden, I must sue and sue in vain
Yet doth now this thing of evil my longsuffering heart beguile,
Though the utmost she vouchsafes me is the shadow of a smile:
And I soon shall know no respite, have no solace e'en in sleep.

IDYLL XXIX

L OVES

" Sincerity comes with the wine-cup, " my dear.
Then now o'er our wine-cups let us be sincere.
My soul's treasured secret to you I'll impart;
It is this; that I never won fairly your heart
One half of my life, I am conscious, has flown;
The residue lives on your image alone.
You are kind, and I dream I'm in paradise then;
You are angry, and lo! all is darkness again
It is right to torment one who loves you? Obey

IDYLL XXIII

Love A VENGED

A LAD deep dipt in passion pined for one
Whose mood was froward as her face was fair
Lovers she loathed, for tenderness she had none:
Ne'er knew what Love was like, nor how he bare
A bow, and arrows to make young maids smart:
Proof to all speech, all access, seemed her heart.

So he found naught his furnace to allay;
No quiver of lips, no lighting of kind eyes,

IDYLL XIX

Love S TEALING H ONEY

O NCE thievish Love the honeyed hives would rob,
When a bee stung him: soon he felt a throb
Through all his finger tips, and, wild with pain,
Blew on his hands and stamped and jumped in vain.
To Aphrodite then he told his woe:
" How can a thing so tiny hurt one so?"
She smiled and said: " Why, thou'rt a tiny thing,
As is the bee; yet sorely thou canst sting"

IDYLL XIV

THE Love OF Æ SHINES

Thyonichus Æschines

Æschines

H AIL , sir Thyonichus
Thyonichus . Æschines, to you.
Æschines . I have missed thee
Thyonichus . Missed me! Why what ails him now?
Æschines . My friend, I am ill at ease.
Thyonichus . Then this explains
Thy leanness, and thy prodigal moustache

I THANK thee, Love, that thou hast overthrown
The tyranny of Self; I would not now
Even in desire, possess thee mine alone
In land-locked anchorage: nay rather go,
Ride the high seas, the fruitless human seas,
Where white-winged ships are set for barren shores,
Though freighted all, those lovely argosies,
And laden with a wealth of rarest stores.
Go, draw them after thee, and lead them on
With thine own music, to the ideal west,
Where, in the youth of ages, vaguely shone
The term of all, the Islands of the Blest.

Interpretation of Dreams.

Yesterday I in a dream saw her whom I love at the window;
What saw I when awake? only the flowers she gave.
But in my dreaming to-day, bright flow'rs I saw by the window;
Surely to-day will ere long shew me the darling herself!