love poetry

Her eyes are fixed on the village street,
And his on the sky-girt sea —
But oh, her heart leaps after his ship
And his at home would be!

But he must fight with the strangling gale
Or run with the singing breeze,
While she sits, hiding a hungered love
And dreading the empty seas.

As Cupid , from his Cruel Sport,
Return'd, to Grace his Mother's Court,
In Triumph leading Bleeding Hearts,
Throbbing with Love, transfix'd with Darts;
Himself untouch'd! the Hunter stray'd
Into a Cooling, Myrtle Shade,
And saw a Lonely, Lovely Maid.

No sooner did young Master spy
The Virgin's soft, refulgent Eye,
Than did his Opening Breast receive
A Wound, like Those, He, often, gave;
And, down his Arms and Hearts He threw,
And languishing, full, in her View,

I saw, I saw the lovely child,
I watched her by the way,
I learnt her gestures sweet and wild,
Her loving eyes and gay.

Her name? — I heard not, nay, nor care, —
Enough it was for me
To find her innocently fair
And delicately free.

Oh cease and go ere dreams be done,
Nor trace the angel's birth,
Nor find the Paradisal one
A blossom of the earth!

Thus is it with our subtlest joys, —
How quick the soul's alarm!
How lightly deed or word destroys
That evanescent charm!

My sweet girl is lying still
In her lovely atmosphere,
The gentle hopes her blue veins fill
With pure silver, warm and clear.

O, see her hair, O, mark her breast,
Would it not, O! comfort thee,
If thou could'st nightly go to rest
By that virgin chastity.

I can remember well
My very early youth,
My sumptuous Isabel,
Who was a girl of truth;
Of golden truth; — we do not often see
Those whose whole lives have only known to be.

So sunlight, very warm,
On harvest fields and trees,
Could not more sweetly form
Rejoicing melodies
For these deep things, than Isabel for me;
I lay beneath her soul as a lit tree.

With a spreading and spreading
(Like that) of the clouds that sit at morning
On the moor of Kasuga, —
I increase in my love
In the lapse of months and days.

Doubtlesse Christ onely loved man the most,
Entring into the world, (though he might boast
Rightly indeede to be the Sonne of God,
Man to deliver from Gods smarting Rod,
On him he rooke, such was his love to man ,
Not in arerages wherein he had ran,
Duely to pay the debts which he did owe,
Expressing plainly that he lov'd man so.

O that our love with zeale to Christ might burne,

Mourne we'de for Christ as he for us did mournt ,
A low, A low, Oh hone for us he cry'd,
Labouring with love when he did earst abide,

I

For whom is Beauty? Where no eyes attend
As richly goes the day; and every dawn
Reddens along green rivers whereupon
None ever gaze. Think, could earth see an end
Of all the twilight lovers whose thoughts blend
With scents of garden blooms they call their own,
Would not as close the yellowest rose outblown
Be, after them, the unmurmurous evening's friend?

The dark has passed, and the chill Autumn morn
Unrolls her faded glories in the fields;
Dead are the gilded air-hosts newly-born,
The hardiest flowers droop their sodden shields,
For lovely Summer hath cut short her stay —
The fickle goddess, loaded with delight,
Grown wantonly unconstant, fled away
Under a hoar-frost mantle yesternight.
In one brief hour, the warm and flashing skies
Pale in the marble dawn; we cannot choose,
But marvel that hearts turn to stone, and eyes
Brimful of passion all their lustre lose.

FROM METASTASIO

Believe me, dear girl, when I swear,
Though a stranger you're yet to Love's pain,
There is something too soft in your air,
Too gentle for scorn and disdain:

Though the torments of Love you mayn't know,
Yet cruel you never can prove;
For Pity, though colder than snow,
Is still the forerunner of Love.