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To H.R.H. Princess Beatrice
Two Suns of Love make day of human life,Which else with all its pains, and griefs, and deaths,Were utter darknessone, the Sun of dawnThat brightens thro the Mothers tender eyes,And warms the childs awakening worldand oneThe later-rising Sun of spousal Love,Which from her household orbit draws the childTo move in other spheres. The Mother weepsAt that white funeral of the single life,Her maiden daughters marriage; and her tearsAre half of pleasure, half of painthe childIs happyeven in leaving her! but thou,True daughter, whose all-faithful, filial eyesHave seen the loneliness of earthly thrones,Wilt neither quit the widowd Crown, nor letThis later light of Love have risen in vain,But moving thro the Mothers home, betweenThe two ...
Alfred Lord Tennyson
The Doubters And The Lovers.
Ye love, and sonnets write! Fate's strange behest!The heart, its hidden meaning to declare,Must seek for rhymes, uniting pair with pair:Learn, children, that the will is weak, at best.Scarcely with freedom the o'erflowing breastAs yet can speak, and well may it beware;Tempestuous passions sweep each chord that's there,Then once more sink to night and gentle rest.Why vex yourselves and us, the heavy stoneUp the steep path but step by step to roll?It falls again, and ye ne'er cease to strive.THE LOVERS.But we are on the proper road alone!If gladly is to thaw the frozen soul,The fire of love must aye be kept alive.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To J. H. And E. W. H.
Nourished by peaceful suns and gracious dew,Your sweet youth budded and your sweet lives grew,And all the world seemed rose-beset for you.The rose of beauty was your mutual dower,The stainless rose of love, an early flower,The stately blooms of ease and wealth and power.And treading thus on pathways flower-bestrewn,It well might be, that, cold and careless grown,You both had lived for your own joys alone.But, holding all these fair things as in trust.Gently you walked, still scattering on the dustOf harder roads, which others tread, and must,--Your heritage of brightness, not a rayOf noontide sought you out, but straight awayYou caught and halved it with some darker day:And as the sweet saint's loaves were turned, it is ...
Susan Coolidge
Early Love
Who says I wrong thee, my half-opened rose?Little he knows of thee or me, or love. -I am so tender of thy fragile youth,Yea, in my hours of wildest ecstasy,Keeping close-bitted each careering sense.Only I give mine eyes unmeasured lawTo feed them where they will, and their delightWas curbed at first, until thy tender shameDied in the bearing of thy first born joy.I am not cruel, my half-opened rose,Though in the sunshine of my own desireI have uncurled thy petals to the lightAnd fed the tendrils of thy dawning senseWith delicate caresses, till they leaveThee tremulous with the newness of thy joy,Sharing thy lover's fire with innocent flame.Others will wrong thee, that I well foresee,Being a man, knowing my fellow men,
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
To a Baby Kinswoman
Love, whose light thrills heaven and earth,Smiles and weeps upon thy birth,Child, whose mother's love-lit eyesWatch thee but from Paradise.Sweetest sight that earth can give,Sweetest light of eyes that live,Ours must needs, for hope withdrawn,Hail with tears thy soft spring dawn.Light of hope whose star hath set,Light of love whose sun lives yet,Holier, happier, heavenlier loveBreathes about thee, burns above,Surely, sweet, than ours can be,Shed from eyes we may not see,Though thine own may see them shineNight and day, perchance, on thine.Sun and moon that lighten earthSeem not fit to bless thy birth:Scarce the very stars we knowHere seem bright enough to showWhence in unimagined skiesGlows the vigil of such eyes.<...
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Love's Entreaty.
Tu sa' ch' i' so, Signor mie.Thou knowest, love, I know that thou dost know That I am here more near to thee to be, And knowest that I know thou knowest me: What means it then that we are sundered so?If they are true, these hopes that from thee flow, If it is real, this sweet expectancy, Break down the wall that stands 'twixt me and thee; For pain in prison pent hath double woe.Because in thee I love, O my loved lord, What thou best lovest, be not therefore stern: Souls burn for souls, spirits to spirits cry!I seek the splendour in thy fair face stored; Yet living man that beauty scarce can learn, And he who fain would find it, first must die.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
Love.
Canst thou love me, lady?I've not learn'd to woo:Thou art on the shadySide of sixty too.Still I love thee dearly!Thou hast lands and pelf:But I love thee merelyMerely for thyself.Wilt thou love me, fairest?Though thou art not fair;And I think thou wearestSomeone-else's hair.Thou could'st love, though, dearly:And, as I am told,Thou art very nearlyWorth thy weight, in gold.Dost thou love me, sweet one?Tell me that thou dost!Women fairly beat one,But I think thou must.Thou art loved so dearly:I am plain, but thenThou (to speak sincerely)Art as plain again.Love me, bashful fairy!I've an empty purse:And I've "moods," which vary;Mostly for the worse.Still, I lov...
Charles Stuart Calverley
Leaven.
Love is a leaven; and a loving kissThe leaven of a loving sweetheart is.
Robert Herrick
The Great Lover (The South Seas)
I have been so great a lover: filled my daysSo proudly with the splendour of Love's praise,The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,Desire illimitable, and still content,And all dear names men use, to cheat despair,For the perplexed and viewless streams that bearOur hearts at random down the dark of life.Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strifeSteals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far,My night shall be remembered for a starThat outshone all the suns of all men's days.Shall I not crown them with immortal praiseWhom I have loved, who have given me, dared with meHigh secrets, and in darkness knelt to seeThe inenarrable godhead of delight?Love is a flame; we have beaconed the world's night.A city: and we have built it, these and I....
Rupert Brooke
Love-Wonder.
Or whether sad or joyous be her hours,Yet ever is she good and ever fair.If she be glad, 'tis like a child's wild air,Who claps her hands above a heap of flowers;And if she's sad, it is no cloud that lowers,Rather a saint's pale grace, whose golden hairGleams like a crown, whose eyes are like a prayerFrom some quiet window under minster towers.But ah, Beloved, how shall I be taughtTo tell this truth in any rhymed line?For words and woven phrases fall to naught,Lost in the silence of one dream divine,Wrapped in the beating wonder of this thought:Even thou, who art so precious, thou art mine!
Archibald Lampman
The Lover Who Thinks.
Dost thou remember, Love, those hoursShot o'er with random rainy showers,When the bold sun would woo coy May?She smiled, then wept - and looked another way.We, learning from the sun and season,Together plotted joyous treason'Gainst maiden majesty, to giveEach other troth, and henceforth wedded live.But love, ah, love we know is blind!Not always what they seek they findWhen, groping through dim-lighted natures,Fond lovers look for old, ideal statures.What then? Is all our purpose lost?The balance broken, since Fate tossedUneven weights? Oh well bewareThat thought, my sweet: 't were neither fit nor fair!Seek not for any grafted fruitsFrom souls so wedded at the roots;But whatsoe'er our fibres hold,Let tha...
George Parsons Lathrop
God-Made.
Somewhere, somewhere in this heartThere lies a jewel from the sea,Or from a rock, or from the sand,Or dropped from heaven wondrously.Oh, burn, my jewel, in my glance!Oh, shimmer on my lips in prayer!Light my love's eyes to read my soul,Which, wrapt in ashes, yet is fair!When dead I lie, forgotten, deepWithin the earth and sunken past,Still shall my jewel light my dust, -The worth God gives us, first and last!
Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
Erotion
Sweet for a little even to fear, and sweet,O love, to lay down fear at loves fair feet;Shall not some fiery memory of his breathLie sweet on lips that touch the lips of death?Yet leave me not; yet, if thou wilt, be free;Love me no more, but love my love of thee.Love where thou wilt, and live thy life; and I,One thing I can, and one love cannotdie.Pass from me; yet thine arms, thine eyes, thine hair,Feed my desire and deaden my despair.Yet once more ere time change us, ere my cheekWhiten, ere hope be dumb or sorrow speak,Yet once more ere thou hate me, one full kiss;Keep other hours for others, save me this.Yea, and I will not (if it please thee) weep,Lest thou be sad; I will but sigh, and sleep.Sweet, does death hurt? thou canst not do me wro...
Love's Excuse.
Dal dolcie pianto.From happy tears to woeful smiles, from peace Eternal to a brief and hollow truce, How have I fallen!--when 'tis truth we lose, Sense triumphs o'er all adverse impulses.I know not if my heart bred this disease, That still more pleasing grows with growing use; Or else thy face, thine eyes, which stole the hues And fires of Paradise--less fair than these.Thy beauty is no mortal thing; 'twas sent From heaven on high to make our earth divine: Wherefore, though wasting, burning, I'm content;For in thy sight what could I do but pine? If God himself thus rules my destiny, Who, when I die, can lay the blame on thee?
Love's Humility
As some rapt gazer on the lowly earth,Looks up to radiant planets, ranging far,So I, whose soul doth know thy wondrous worthLook longing up to thee as to a star.
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Perfect Love.
Beloved, those who moan of love's brief dayShall find but little grace with me, I guess,Who know too well this passion's tendernessTo deem that it shall lightly pass away,A moment's interlude in life's dull play;Though many loves have lingered to distress,So shall not ours, sweet Lady, ne'ertheless,But deepen with us till both heads be grey.For perfect love is like a fair green plant,That fades not with its blossoms, but lives on,And gentle lovers shall not come to want,Though fancy with its first mad dream be gone;Sweet is the flower, whose radiant glory flies,But sweeter still the green that never dies.
Evelyn Hope
I.Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead!Sit and watch by her side an hour.That is her book-shelf, this her bed;She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,Beginning to die too, in the glass;Little has yet been changed, I thinkThe shutters are shut, no light may passSave two long rays through the hinges chink.II.Sixteen years old when she died!Perhaps she had scarcely heard my nameIt was not her time to love; beside,Her life had many a hope and aim,Duties enough and little cares,And now was quiet, now astir,Till Gods hand beckoned unawares,And the sweet white brow is all of her.III.Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope?What, your soul was pure and true,The good stars met in your horoscope,Made...
Robert Browning
True Love
He loves not much who loves not honor more;If men lack this then love must lack as well;If this possessed no tongue love's depths can tell;The heart an ocean filled from shore to shore.Seeing in him the possibilityOf likeness to the great and Blessed One;It may be even now in him begun.I love him much for what I hope to be,And show my love by yielding him his due;For sentimental love is ever vain,It cannot peace, much less heaven's favor gain;But those who love in deed are blessed and true.
Joseph Horatio Chant