love poems

CLII

Love, to give law unto his subject hearts,
Stood in the eyes of Barsabe the bright,
And in a look anon himself converts
Cruelly pleasant before King David sight;
First dazed his eyes, and further forth he starts
With venomed breath, as softly as he might
Touched his senses, and overruns his bones
With creeping fire sparpled for the nonce.

And when he saw that kindled was the flame,
The moist poison in his heart he lanced
So that the soul did tremble with the same.

" But that thou mayst not think that I wage implacable warfare against Fortune, I own there is a time when the deceitful goddess serves men well — I mean when she reveals herself, uncovers her face, and confesses her true character. Perhaps thou dost not yet grasp my meaning. Strange is the thing I am trying to express, and for this cause I can scarce find words to make clear my thought. For truly I believe that Ill Fortune is of more use to men than Good Fortune.

ECLOG. VII.

The PRIZE.

1

Aurora from old Tithons frosty bed
(Cold, wintry, wither'd Tithon ) early creeps;
Her cheek with grief was pale, with anger red;
Out of her window close she blushing peeps;
Her weeping eyes in pearled dew she steeps,
Casting what sportlesse nights she ever led:
She dying lives, to think he's living dead.
Curst be, and cursed is that wretched sire,
That yokes green youth with age, want with desire.
Who ties the sunne to snow? or marries frost to fire?

2

Eclog. VI

A fisher-boy that never knew his peer
In daintie songs, the gentle Thomalin ,
With folded arms, deep sighs, & heavy cheer
Where hundred Nymphs, & hundred Muses inne,
Sunk down by Chamus brinks; with him his deare,
Deare Thirsil lay; oft times would he begin
To cure his grief, and better way advise;
But still his words, when his sad friend he spies,
Forsook his silent tongue, to speak in watrie eyes.

2

" H IPPOLITOS . "

Phaidra . O Women, dwellers in this portal-seat
Of Pelops' land, gazing toward my Crete,
How oft, in other days than these, have I
Thro night's long hours thought of man's misery,
And how this life is wreckt! And, to mine eyes,
Not in man's knowledge, not in wisdom, lies
The lack that makes for sorrow. Nay, we scan
And know the right — for wit hath many a man —
But will not to the last end strive and serve.
For some grow too soon weary, and some swerve

In a castel semly sett,
Strenthed wele widuten lett
þis castel es of love and grace.
Both of socure and of solace;
Apon þe marche it standes traist,
Of enmye dredis it na fraist,
It es hy sett apon a cragg,
Gray and hard, widuten hagg.
Dounward es it polischt bright,
þat it may neyhe na warid wiht,
Ne na maner gin of were
May cast þartill it forto dere,
Wid wallis closid four of stan,
þat fayrer in þis world es nan.
Baylis has þis castel thre,
Wid wallis thrinne, semly to se,

XVI

It nods and curtseys and recovers
When the wind blows above,
The nettle on the graves of lovers
That hanged themselves for love.

The nettle nods, the wind blows over,
The man, he does not move,
The lover of the grave, the lover
That hanged himself for love.

WHEREIN HE INVOKES THE AID OF LOVE TO SING HER WORTHILY

Ah Love, assist my faint and foolish brain!
Pillar the style, sustain the lyric portal!
Help me to sing of her who is immortal,
A citizen of the celestial reign!
Permit, Lord, that my verses may attain
The reach of her proud praise (presumptuous mortal!)
Whose passing our poor world must now deplore till
The Golden Trumpet give her back again.
Love answers: " In myself and Heaven the best,
By converse pure and precept sage and holy,

WHEREIN HE CRAVES THE SWIFT RECOMPENSE OF HER INTERCESSION AS REWARD FOR HIS TRUE AND LONG LOVE

Lady, that blissfully with God may glitter
By virtue of surpassing charms and graces,
Thou art enthroned now in the golden places,
With more than pearls adorned, with purple fitter
A princes of the Lord: Ah, loveliest sitter
On the celestial dais, through Him that traces
The secret breast, regard my heart whose basis
Of love and faith my songs prove, my tears bitter.
Know, also, at the last how my heart only

WHEREIN THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD CAME AND WENT WITH LAURA

Amid a lovely thousand one I saw,
Whom seeing — and these shapes no fancy bred —
Instantly I was seized by amorous dread,
Then flamed with ardour, then was hushed with awe.
No fleck was in her, never mortal flaw,
No earthly happiness her hunger fed;
My soul, constrained to follow where she led,
Flinched at the blue pavilions of His law.
Alas, her sweep outsoared all wings, all cries,
And in a little space she sped from sight: