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Celestial And Earthly Love.
Non è sempre di colpa.Love is not always harsh and deadly sin: If it be love of loveliness divine, It leaves the heart all soft and infantine For rays of God's own grace to enter in.Love fits the soul with wings, and bids her win Her flight aloft nor e'er to earth decline; 'Tis the first step that leads her to the shrine Of Him who slakes the thirst that burns within.The love of that whereof I speak, ascends: Woman is different far; the love of her But ill befits a heart all manly wise.The one love soars, the other downward tends; The soul lights this, while that the senses stir, And still his arrow at base quarry flies.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
Husband And Wife.
The world had chafed his spirit proud By its wearing, crushing strife,The censure of the thoughtless crowd Had touched a blameless life;Like the dove of old, from the water's foam,He wearily turned to the ark of home.Hopes he had cherished with joyous heart, Had toiled for many a day,With body and spirit, and patient art, Like mists had melted away;And o'er day-dreams vanished, o'er fond hopes flown,He sat him down to mourn alone.No, not alone, for soft fingers rest On his hot and aching brow,Back the damp hair is tenderly pressed While a sweet voice whispers low:"Thy joys have I shared, O my husband true,And shall I not share thy sorrows too?"Vain task to resist the loving gaze That so f...
Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
Love
Foolish love is only folly;Wanton love is too unholy;Greedy love is covetous;Idle love is frivolous;But the gracious love is itThat doth prove the work of it.Beauty but deceives the eye;Flattery leads the ear awry;Wealth doth but enchant the wit;Want, the overthrow of it;While in Wisdom's worthy grace,Virtue sees the sweetest face.There hath Love found out his life,Peace without all thought of strife;Kindness in Discretion's care;Truth, that clearly doth declareFaith doth in true fancy prove,Lust the excrements of Love.Then in faith may fancy seeHow my love may constru'd be;How it grows and what it seeks;How it lives and what it likes;So in highest grace regard it,Or in lowest scorn di...
Nicholas Breton
Love.
Why is it said thou canst not liveIn a youthful breast and fair,Since thou eternal life canst give,Canst bloom for ever there?Since withering pain no power possessed,Nor age, to blanch thy vermeil hue,Nor time's dread victor, death, confessed,Though bathed with his poison dew,Still thou retain'st unchanging bloom,Fixed tranquil, even in the tomb.And oh! when on the blest, reviving,The day-star dawns of love,Each energy of soul survivingMore vivid, soars above,Hast thou ne'er felt a rapturous thrill,Like June's warm breath, athwart thee fly,O'er each idea then to steal,When other passions die?Felt it in some wild noonday dream,When sitting by the lonely stream,Where Silence says, 'Mine is the dell';And not a murmur ...
Percy Bysshe Shelley
God Is Love.
Come blest Spirit from above,Come and fill my heart with love;Love to God, and love to man,Love to do the good I can;Love to high, and love to low,Love to friend, and love to foe.Love to rich, and love to poor,Love to beggar at my door.Love to young, and love to old,Love to hardened heart and cold.Love, true love, my heart withinFor the sinner, not the sin;Love to holy Sabbath day,Love to meditate and pray,Love for love, for hatred even;Love like this, is born of Heaven.
Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow
Freedom And Love
How delicious is the winningOf a kiss at love's beginning,When two mutual hearts are sighingFor the knot there's no untying!Yet remember, 'Midst our wooing,Love has bliss, but Love has ruing;Other smiles may make you fickle,Tears for other charms may trickle.Love he comes, and Love he tarries,Just as fate or fancy carries;Longest stays, when sorest chidden;Laughs and flies, when press'd and bidden.Bind the sea to slumber stilly,Bind its odour to the lily,Bind the aspen ne'er to quiver,Then bind Love to last for ever.Love's a fire that needs renewalOf fresh beauty for its fuel:Love's wing moults when caged and captured,Only free, he soars enraptured.Can you keep the bee from rangingOr the ringdove's neck from changi...
Thomas Campbell
Lovelace Grown Old
IMy life has been like a bee that rovesThrough a scented garden close,And 'tis I who have kept the honey of love,The hoarded sweetness and scent thereof,For all I forget the rose.Oh, exquisite gardens long forgotThat have made my store complete,Though winter fall upon blossom and bee,Yet the kisses I garnered remain with meForever and ever sweet.IIThe Priest hath had his word and said his say--A word i' faith more honest than beguiling--But now he turns upon his gloomy way--Good soul, he leaves me smiling.I may not ponder much on future wrath;Of all those loves of mine, some six or seven,Surely ere this have climbed that thorny pathThat leads at last to Heaven.My bold, brown beau...
Theodosia Garrison
To A Lady That Desired I Would Love Her
Now you have freely given me leave to love,What will you do?Shall I your mirth, or passion move,When I begin to woo;Will you torment, or scorn, or love me too?Each petty beauty can disdain, and ISpite of your hateWithout your leave can see, and die;Dispense a nobler fate!Tis easy to destroy, you may create.Then give me leave to love, and love me tooNot with designTo raise, as Loves cursed rebels do,When puling poets whine,Fame to their beauty, from their blubbered eyne.Grief is a puddle, and reflects not clearYour beautys rays;Joys are pure streams, your eyes appearSullen in sadder lays;In cheerful numbers they shine bright with praise,Which shall not mention to express you fair,Wounds, f...
Thomas Carew
The Bliss Of Absence.
DRINK, oh youth, joy's purest rayFrom thy loved one's eyes all day,And her image paint at night!Better rule no lover knows,Yet true rapture greater grows,When far sever'd from her sight.Powers eternal, distance, time,Like the might of stars sublime,Gently rock the blood to rest,O'er my senses softness steals,Yet my bosom lighter feels,And I daily am more blest.Though I can forget her ne'er,Yet my mind is free from care,I can calmly live and move;Unperceived infatuationLonging turns to adoration,Turns to reverence my love.Ne'er can cloud, however light,Float in ether's regions bright,When drawn upwards by the sun,As my heart in rapturous calm.Free fro...
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Launa Dee.
Weary, oh, so wearyWith it all!Sunny days or dreary--How they pall!Why should we be heroes,Launa Dee,Striving to no winning?Let the world be Zero's!As in the beginningLet it be!What good comes of toiling,When all's done?Frail green sprays for spoilingOf the sun;Laurel leaf or myrtle,Love or fame--Ah, what odds what spray, sweet?Time, that makes life fertile,Makes its blooms decay, sweet,As they came.Lie here with me dreaming,Cheek to cheek,Lithe limbs twined and gleaming,Brown and sleek;Like two serpents coilingIn their lair.Where's the good of wreathingSprays for Time's despoiling?Let me feel your breathingIn my hair.You and I together--...
Bliss Carman
To My Husband On Our Wedding-Day.
I leave for thee, beloved one, The home and friends of youth,Trusting my hopes, my happiness, Unto thy love and truth;I leave for thee my girlhood's joys, Its sunny, careless mirth,To bear henceforth my share amid The many cares of earth.And yet, no wild regret I give To all that now I leave,The golden dreams, the flow'ry wreaths That I no more may weave;The future that before me lies A dark and unknown sea -Whate'er may be its storms or shoals, I brave them all with thee!I will not tell thee now of love Whose life, ere this, thou'st guessed,And which, like sacred secret, long Was treasured in my breast;Enough that if thy lot be calm, Or storms should o'er it sweep,
Hira-Singh's Farewell to Burmah
On the wooden deck of the wooden Junk, silent, alone, we lie,With silver foam about the bow, and a silver moon in the sky:A glimmer of dimmer silver here, from the anklets round your feet,Our lips may close on each other's lips, but never our souls may meet.For though in my arms you lie at rest, your name I have never heard,To carry a thought between us two, we have not a single word.And yet what matter we do not speak, when the ardent eyes have spoken,The way of love is a sweeter way, when the silence is unbroken.As a wayward Fancy, tired at times, of the cultured Damask Rose,Drifts away to the tangled copse, where the wild Anemone grows;So the ordered and licit love ashore, is hardly fresh and freeAs this light love in the open wind and salt of the outer sea.<...
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
In A Garden
The pink rose drops its petals onThe moonlit lawn, the moonlit lawn;The moon, like some wide rose of white,Drops down the summer night.No rose there isAs sweet as this -Thy mouth, that greets me with a kiss.The lattice of thy casement twinesWith jasmine vines, with jasmine vines;The stars, like jasmine blossoms, lieAbout the glimmering sky.No jasmine tressCan so caressLike thy white arms' soft loveliness.About thy door magnolia bloomsMake sweet the glooms, make sweet the glooms;A moon-magnolia is the duskClosed in a dewy husk.However much,No bloom gives suchSoft fragrance as thy bosom's touch.The flowers blooming now will pass,And strew the grass, and strew the grass;The night, like so...
Madison Julius Cawein
The Rice-boat
I slept upon the Rice-boatThat, reef protected, layAt anchor, where the palm-treesInfringe upon the bay.The windless air was heavyWith cinnamon and rose,The midnight calm seemed waiting,Too fateful for repose.One joined me on the Rice-boatWith wild and waving hair,Whose vivid words and laughterAwoke the silent air.Oh, beauty, bare and shining,Fresh washen in the bay,One well may love by moonlightWhat one would not love by day!Above among the cordageThe night wind hardly stirred,The lapping of the ripplesWas all the sound we heard.Love reigned upon the Rice-boat,And Peace controlled the sea,The spirit's consolation,The senses' ecstasy.Though many things and mightyAre further...
Kindliness
When love has changed to kindliness,Oh, love, our hungry lips, that pressSo tight that Time's an old god's dreamNodding in heaven, and whisper stuffSeven million years were not enoughTo think on after, make it seemLess than the breath of children playing,A blasphemy scarce worth the saying,A sorry jest, "When love has grownTo kindliness, to kindliness!" . . .And yet, the best that either's knownWill change, and wither, and be less,At last, than comfort, or its ownRemembrance. And when some caressTendered in habit (once a flameAll heaven sang out to) wakes the shameUnworded, in the steady eyesWe'll have, THAT day, what shall we do?Being so noble, kill the twoWho've reached their second-best? Being wise,Break cleanly off, ...
Rupert Brooke
To A Little Boy.
I.Dear little one with eyes so blue, And silken ringlets of flaxen hair!Oh, may life have in store for you Something better than anguish and care! Oh, may thy footsteps guided be In paths of peace and pleasantness! Oh, may those bright eyes never see Much of the cold world's bitterness!II.Dear little one with innocent lips, Tasting life's cup at the sparkling brim!Oh, may the dregs that sorrow sips Ever be kept aloof from him! Oh, may the smile on his dimpled face Through the years to come still linger there! Oh, may Time's fingers gently place The silver strands in his flaxen hair!
George W. Doneghy
The Teak Forest
Whether I loved you who shall say?Whether I drifted down your wayIn the endless River of Chance and Change,And you woke the strangeUnknown longings that have no names,But burn us all in their hidden flames, Who shall say?Life is a strange and a wayward thing:We heard the bells of the Temples ring,The married children, in passing, sing.The month of marriage, the month of spring,Was full of the breath of sunburnt flowersThat bloom in a fiercer light than ours,And, under a sky more fiercely blue, I came to you!You told me tales of your vivid lifeWhere death was cruel and danger rife -Of deep dark forests, of poisoned trees,Of pains and passions that scorch and freeze,Of southern noontides and eastern nights,
Love's Expostulation.
S' un casto amor.If love be chaste, if virtue conquer ill, If fortune bind both lovers in one bond, If either at the other's grief despond, If both be governed by one life, one will;If in two bodies one soul triumph still, Raising the twain from earth to heaven beyond, If Love with one blow and one golden wand Have power both smitten breasts to pierce and thrill;If each the other love, himself forgoing, With such delight, such savour, and so well, That both to one sole end their wills combine;If thousands of these thoughts, all thought outgoing, Fail the least part of their firm love to tell: Say, can mere angry spite this knot untwine?