love

1. CAPTIVITY

YOUR eyen two wol slee me sodenly,
I may the beaute of hem not sustene,
So woundeth hit through-out my herte kene.

And but your word wol helen hastily
My hertes wounde, whyl that hit is grene,
   Your eyen two wol slee me sodenly,
   I may the beaute of hem not sustene.

Upon my trouthe I sey yow feithfully,
That ye ben of my lyf and deeth the quene;
For with my deeth the trouthe shal be sene.
   Your eyen two wol slee me sodenly,
   I may the beaute of hem not sustene,

Men loved wholly beyond wisdom
Have the staff without the banner.
Like a fire in a dry thicket
Rising within women's eyes
Is the love men must return.
Heart, so subtle now, and trembling,
What a marvel to be wise.,
To love never in this manner!
To be quiet in the fern
Like a thing gone dead and still,
Listening to the prisoned cricket
Shake its terrible dissembling
Music in the granite hill.

Every old man I see
Reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when sheaves were gathered.

That man I saw in Gardner Street
Stumbled on the kerb was one,
He stared at me half-eyed,
I might have been his son.

And I remember the musician
Faltering over his fiddle
In Bayswater, London,
He too set me the riddle.

Every old man I see
In October-coloured weather
Seems to say to me:
"I was once your father."

You say love is this, love is that:
Poplar tassels, willow tendrils
the wind and the rain comb,
tinkle and drip, tinkle and drip--
branches drifting apart. Hagh!
Love has not even visited this country.

Love while you've got
love to give.
Live while you've got
life to live.

Meintjes Kopje! Meintjes Kopje!
Do the purple daisies grow
On your rugged slopes in spring-time
As they did in years ago,

When I walked with one who loved me,
In the days when love was young;
When our eyes held glinted laughter
And our sighs were songs unsung?

But the laughter fell and faded,
And the wonder-song is still,
And the track goes all untrodden
Past the pool and up the hill.

Meintjes Kopje! Meintjes Kopje!
Other years your flowers restore,

MY Damon was the first to wake
   The gentle flame that cannot die;
My Damon is the last to take
   The faithful bosom's softest sigh:
The life between is nothing worth,
   O cast it from thy thought away!
Think of the day that gave it birth,
   And this its sweet returning day.

Buried be all that has been done,
   Or say that naught is done amiss;
For who the dangerous path can shun
   In such bewildering world as this?
But love can every fault forgive,
   Or with a tender look reprove;

I
When I considered it too closely, when I wore it like an element
and smelt it like water,
Life is become less lovely, the net nearer than the skin, a
little troublesome, a little terrible.

I pledged myself awhile ago not to seek refuge, neither in death
nor in a walled garden,
In lies nor gated loyalties, nor in the gates of contempt, that
easily lock the world out of doors.

Here on the rock it is great and beautiful, here on the foam-wet

Give me more love or more disdain;
The torrid, or the frozen zone,
Bring equal ease unto my pain;
The temperate affords me none;
Either extreme, of love, or hate,
Is sweeter than a calm estate.

Give me a storm; if it be love,
Like Danae in that golden show'r
I swim in pleasure; if it prove
Disdain, that torrent will devour
My vulture-hopes; and he's possess'd
Of heaven, that's but from hell releas'd.

Then crown my joys, or cure my pain;

Medicate me with a peaceful pile of letters,
And lead me on my way again.
You picked me up when I was down,
And you drowned me with your love again.
Compassion is what you are made up of,
And compassion brought me to live in sin.
Love brightens the darkened shadows in your garden,
That I’ve been pleading for you to let me in.
Winter is climbing quickly,
And laughing in my face again.
Loves are coming and going,
And your heart I will never win;
But you picked me up when I was down,