love

you had swept back your bangs for the first time
when I saw you under the apple tree
the flower-comb in your hair
I thought you yourself were a flower too.

you stretched out your pale white hand gently
giving me an apple:
like the ripening red of the autumn fruit
my first feeling of love

my sigh, without any awareness
touched your hair
the joys of love's offerings
drinking your love...

under a tree in the apple orchard
nature's narrow road
who left this token here?

Ah! who'll e'er those days restore,

Those bright days of early love
Who'll one hour again concede,

Of that time so fondly cherish'd!
Silently my wounds I feed,
And with wailing evermore

Sorrow o'er each joy now perish'd.
Ah! who'll e'er the days restore

Of that time so fondly cherish'd.

Now it's over, and now it's done;
Why does everything look the same?
Just as bright, the unheeding sun, --
Can't it see that the parting came?
People hurry and work and swear,
Laugh and grumble and die and wed,
Ponder what they will eat and wear, --
Don't they know that our love is dead?

Just as busy, the crowded street;
Cars and wagons go rolling on,
Children chuckle, and lovers meet, --
Don't they know that our love is gone?
No one pauses to pay a tear;

Give me a few more hours to pass
With the mellow flower of the elm-bough falling,
And then no more than the lonely grass
And the birds calling.

Give me a few more days to keep
With a little love and a little sorrow,
And then the dawn in the skies of sleep
And a clear to-morrow.

Give me a few more years to fill
With a little work and a little lending,
And then the night on a starry hill
And the road's ending.

Say my love is easy had,
Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad-
Still behold me at your side.

Say I'm neither brave nor young,
Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue-
Still you have my heart to wear.

But say my verses do not scan,
And I get me another man!

Hills of silver plate,
grey heights, dark red rocks
through which the Duero bends
its crossbow arc
round Soria, shadowed oaks,
stone dry-lands, naked mountains,
white roads and river poplars,
twilights of Soria, warlike and mystical,
today I feel, for you,
in my hearts depths, sadness,
sadness of love! Fields of Soria,
where it seems the stones have dreams,
you go with me! Hills of silver plate,
grey heights, dark red rocks.

You have taken back the promise
That you spoke so long ago;
Taken back the heart you gave me-
I must even let it go.
Where Love once has breathed, Pride dieth,
So I struggled, but in vain,
First to keep the links together,
Then to piece the broken chain.

But it might not be-so freely
All your friendship I restore,
And the heart that I had taken
As my own forevermore.
No shade of reproach shall touch you,
Dread no more a claim from me-
But I will not have you fancy

Man frames his judgment on reason; but woman on love founds her verdict;
If her judgment loves not, woman already has judged.

They spoke of him I love
With cruel words and gay;
My lips kept silent guard
On all I could not say.

I heard, and down the street
The lonely trees in the square
Stood in the winter wind
Patient and bare.

I heard . . . oh voiceless trees
Under the wind, I knew
The eager terrible spring
Hidden in you.

They came to tell your faults to me,
They named them over one by one;
I laughed aloud when they were done,
I knew them all so well before, --
Oh, they were blind, too blind to see
Your faults had made me love you more.


Submitted by Venus