Oh Love! how fondly, tenderly enshrined
In human hearts, how with our being twined!
Immortal principle, in mercy given,
The brightest mirror of the joys of heaven.
Child of Eternity's unclouded clime,
Too fair for earth, too infinite for time:
A seraph watching o'er Death's sullen shroud,
A sunbeam streaming through a stormy cloud;
An angel hovering o'er the paths of life,
But sought in vain amidst its cares and strife;
Claimed by the many--known but to the few
Who keep thy great Original in view;
Who, void of passion's dross, behold in thee
A glorious attribute of Deity!

Love is the sunlight of the soul,
That, shining on the silken-tressèd head
Of her we love, around it seems to shed
A golden angel-aureole.

And all her ways seem sweeter ways
Than those of other women in that light:
She has no portion with the pallid night,
But is a part of all fair days.

Joy goes where she goes, and good dreams,
Her smile is tender as an old romance
Of Love that dies not, and her soft eye’s glance
Like sunshine set to music seems.

Queen of our fate is she, but crowned
With purple hearts-ease for her womanhood.
There is no place so poor where she has stood
But evermore is holy ground.

An angel from the heaven above
Would not be fair to us as she is fair:
She holds us in a mesh of silken hair,
This one swee...

The human heart will never change,
The human dream will still go on,
The enchanted earth be ever strange
With moonlight and the morning sun,
And still the seas shall shout for joy,
And swing the stars as in a glass,
The girl be angel for the boy,
The lad be hero for the lass.

The fashions of our mortal brains
New names for dead men's thoughts shall give,
But we find not for all our pains
Why 'tis so wonderful to live;
The beauty of a meadow-flower
Shall make a mock of all our skill,
And God, upon his lonely tower
Shall keep his secret - secret still.

The old magician of the skies,
With coloured and sweet-smelling things,
Shall charm the sense and trance the eyes,
Still onward through a million springs;
And nothing old and nothin...

Heart to heart!
And the stillness of night and the moonlight, like hushed breathing
Silently, stealthily moving across thy hair!

O womanly face!
Tender and strong and lucent with infinite feeling,
Shrinking with startled joy, like wind-struck water,
And yet so frank, so unashamed of love!

Ay, for there it is, love--that's the deepest.
Love's not love in the dark.
Light loves wither i' the sun, but Love endureth,
Clothing himself with the light as with a robe.

I would bare my soul to thy sight--
Leave not a secret deep unsearched,
Unrevealing its shame or its glory.
Love without Truth shall die as a soul without God.
A lying love is the love of a day
But the brave and true shall love forever.

Build Love a house;
Let the walls b...

"Entre deux amants il y a toujours l'an qui baise et l'autre qui tend la joue."


I says he loves me well, and I
Believe it; in my hands, to make
Or mar, his life lies utterly,
Nor can I the strong plea deny.
Which claims my love for his love's sake.

He says there is no face so fair
As mine; when I draw near, his eyes
Light up; each ripple of my hair
He loves; the very clunk I wear
He touches fondly where it lies.

And roses, roses all the way,
Upon my path fall, strewed by him;
His tenderness by night, by day,
Keeps faithful watch to heap alway
My cup of pleasure to the brim.

The other women, full of spite,
Count me the happiest woman born
To be so worshipped; I delight
To flaunt his homage in their sight,--
For ...

Your eyes are bright lands.
Your looks are little birds,
Handkerchiefs gently waving goodbye.
In your smile I rest as though in bobbing boats.
Your little stories are made of silk.
I must behold you always.

Her love is like the hardy flower
That blooms amid the Alpine snows;
Deep-rooted in an icy bower,
No blast can chill its sweet repose;
But fresh as is the tropic rose,
Drenched in mellowest sunny beams,
It has as sweet delicious dreams
As any flower that grows.

And though an avalanche came down
And robbed it of the light of day,
That which withstood the tempest's frown
In grief would never pine away.
Hope might withhold her feeblest ray,
Within her bosom's snowy tomb
Love still would wear its everbloom,
The gayest of the gay.

We see the sky, - we love it day by day;
We feel the wind of Spring, from blossoms winging;
We meet with souls tender as tints in May:
For these large ecstasies what are we bringing?

There is no price, best friend, for greatest meed.
Laid on the altar of our true affection,
Wild flowers of love for me must intercede:
And lo! I win your unexcelled protection.

1.
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the Ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine? -

2.
See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?

Hast thou longed through weary days
For the sight of one loved face?
Mast thou cried aloud for rest,
Mid the pain of sundering hours;
Cried aloud for sleep and death,
Since the sweet unhoped for best
Was a shadow and a breath?
O, long now, for no fear lowers
O'er these faint feet-kissing flowers.
O, rest now; and yet in sleep
All thy longing shalt thou keep.

Thou shalt rest and have no fear
Of a dull awaking near,
Of a life for ever blind,
Uncontent and waste and wide.
Thou shalt wake and think it sweet
That thy love is near and kind.
Sweeter still for lips to meet;
Sweetest that thine heart doth hide
Longing all unsatisfied
With all longing's answering
Howsoever close ye cling.

Thou rememberest how of old
E'en th...

Two loves came up a long, wide aisle,
And knelt at a low, white gate;
One -- tender and true, with the shyest smile,
One -- strong, true, and elate.

Two lips spoke in a firm, true way,
And two lips answered soft and low;
In one true hand such a little hand lay
Fluttering, frail as a flake of snow.

One stately head bent humbly there,
Stilled were the throbbings of human love;
One head drooped down like a lily fair,
Two prayers went, wing to wing, above.

God blest them both in the holy place,
A long, brief moment the rite was done;
On the human love fell the heavenly grace,
Making two hearts forever one.

Between two lengthening rows of smiles,
One sweetly shy, one proud, elate,
Two loves passed down the long, wide aisles,
W...

Her passions the shy violet
From Hafiz never hides;
Love-longings of the raptured bird
The bird to him confides.

Deem not my love is only for the bloom,
The honey and the marble, that is You;
Tis so, Belovéd, common loves consume
Their treasury, and vanish like the dew.
Nay, but my love's a thing that's far more true;
For little loves a little hour hath room,
But not for us their brief and trivial doom,
In a far richer soil our loving grew,
From deeper wells of being it upsprings;
Nor shall the wildest kiss that makes one mouth,
    Draining all nectar from the flowered world,
Slake its divine unfathomable drouth;
    And, when your wings against my heart lie furled,
With what a tenderness it dreams and sings!

Listen, Beloved, the Casurinas quiver,
Each tassel prays the wind to set it free,
Hark to the frantic sobbing of the river,
Wild to attain extinction in the sea.
All Nature blindly struggles to dissolve
In other forms and forces, thus to solve
The painful riddle of identity.
Ah, that my soul might lose itself in thee!

Yet, my Beloved One, wherefore seek I union,
Since there is no such thing in all the world, -
Are not our spirits linked in close communion, -
And on my lips thy clinging lips are curled?
Thy tender arms are round my shoulders thrown,
I hear thy heart more loudly than my own,
And yet, to my despair, I know thee far,
As in the stellar darkness, star from star.

Even in times when love with bounteous measure
A simultaneous joy on us...

The sanctity that is about the dead
To make us love them more than late, when here,
Is not it well to find the living dear
With sanctity like this, ere they have fled?

The tender thoughts we nurture for a loss
Of mother, friend, or child, oh! it were wise
To spend this glory on the earnest eyes,
The longing heart, that feel life's present cross.

Give also mercy to the living here
Whose keen-strung souls will quiver at your touch;
The utmost reverence is not too much
For eyes that weep, although the lips may sneer.

Each shining light above us
    Has its own peculiar grace;
But every light of heaven
    Is in my darling's face.

For it is like the sunlight,
    So strong and pure and warm,
That folds all good and happy things,
    And guards from gloom and harm.

And it is like the moonlight,
    So holy and so calm;
The rapt peace of a summer night,
    When soft winds die in balm.

And it is like the starlight;
    For, love her as I may,
She dwells still lofty and serene
    In mystery far away.

I loved a child as we should love
Each other everywhere;
I cared more for his happiness
Than I dreaded my own despair.

An angel asked me to give him
My whole life's dearest cost;
And in adding mine to his treasures
I knew they could never be lost.

To his heart I gave the gold,
Though little my own had known;
To his eyes what tenderness
From youth in mine had grown!

I gave him all my buoyant
Hope for my future years;
I gave him whatever melody
My voice had steeped in tears.

Upon the shore of darkness
His drifted body lies.
He is dead, and I stand beside him,
With his beauty in my eyes.

I am like those withered petals
We see on a winter day,
That gladly gave their color
In the happy summer away.

There's more in words than I can teach:
Yet listen, Child! I would not preach;
But only give some plain directions
To guide your speech and your affections.
Say not you 'love' a roasted fowl,
But you may love a screaming owl.
And, if you can, the unwieldy toad
That crawls from his secure abode
Within the mossy garden wall
When evening dews begin to fall.
Oh mark the beauty of his eye:
What wonders in that circle lie!
So clear, so bright, our fathers said
He wears a jewel in his head!
And when, upon some showery day,
Into a path or public way
A frog leaps out from bordering grass,
Startling the timid as they pass,
Do you observe him, and endeavour
To take the intruder into favour;
Learning from him to find a reason
For a light heart in ...