Fire And Love

If you do not want your heart
Burnt at a small flame
Like a spitted sheep,
Fly the love of women.
Fire burns what it touches,
But love burns from afar.

Folk Song of Manchuria.

Edward Powys Mathers

Edward Powys Mathers was an English translator and poet, best known for translating the French Orientalist J.C. Mardrus's translation of 'The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night' in 1923. In addition to translations, Powys Mathers was an influential figure in the realm of cryptic crosswords, devising some of the most challenging puzzles for 'The Observer'. His translations have been lauded for their literary beauty and for introducing English-speaking audiences to classic Persian, Arabic, and Turkish poetry.

Edward Powys Mathers

The Bamboo Garden

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

Invitation

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

The Great Offence

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

To His Love Instead Of A Promised Picture-Book

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

English

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Hearts Of Women

It is hard for a man to tell
The hidden thought in his friend's heart,
And the thought in a man's own heart
Is a thing darker.

If you have seen a woman's heart
Bare to your eyes,
Go quickly away and never tell
What you have seen there.

Street Song of Manchuria.

Edward Powys Mathers

The Dark Fire

Love me not less
Yet ease me of this fever,
That in my wondering heart
Burns, sinks, burns again ever.

Is it your love
In me so fiercely burning,
Or my love leaping to you
Then requickened returning?

Come not to me,
Bring not your body nearer,
Though you overleapt the miles
I could not behold you clearer.

I could not clasp you
Than in my thought more surely;
Breast to breast, heart to heart
Might cling no more securely.

I do not know you,
Seeing you, more than unseeing.
What you are that you are
Here in my spiritual being.

Leave me you cannot,
Nor can I remove me
From the sevenfold dark fire
You have lit here since you love me.

Yet love unsure
No wilder could be burning.
Come...

John Frederick Freeman

Love's Wisdom

Sometimes my idle heart would roam
    Far from its quiet happy nest,
To seek some other newer home,
    Some unaccustomed Best:
But ere it spreads its foolish wings,
'Heart, stay at home, be wise!' Love's wisdom sings.

Sometimes my idle heart would sail
    From out its quiet sheltered bay,
To tempt a less pacific gale,
    And oceans far away:
But ere it shakes its foolish wings,
'Heart, stay at home, be wise!' Love's wisdom sings.

Sometimes my idle heart would fly,
    Mothlike, to reach some shining sin,
It seems so sweet to burn and die
    That wondrous light within:
But ere it burns its foolish wings,
'Heart, stay at home, be wise!' Love's wisdom sings.

Richard Le Gallienne

But Most Thy Light

I know how fire burns,
How from the wrangling fumes
Rose and amber blooms,
And slowly dies.

Nothing's so swift as fire,
There's nothing alive so fierce.
The lifted lances pierce,
Sink, and upspring.

Like an Indian sword it leaps
Out of the smoking sheath.
Even the winged feet of death
Learn speed from fire;

And pain its cunning learns;
Languor its sweet
From the decaying heat
That never dies.

I know how fire burns
Unguessed, save for tears,
When the thousand-fanged flame spears
The body's guard;

Or when the mind, the mind
Is ever-glowing wood,
And fire runs in the blood
Lunatic, blind;

When remorse burns and burns
And burns always, always--
The fire that surest slays
Or ...

John Frederick Freeman

Upon Love

Love scorched my finger, but did spare
The burning of my heart,
To signify in love my share
Should be a little part.

Little I love, but if that he
Would but that heat recall,
That joint to ashes should be burnt
Ere I would love at all.

Robert Herrick

From the Midst of the Fire

From the midst of the fire I fling
These arrows of fire to you:
If they sing, and burn, and sting,
You feel how I burn too;
But if they reach you there
Speed-spent, charred black and cold,
The fire burns out in the air,
The Passion will not be told.

James Thomson