Love poems

/ page 405 of 1285 /

Order by :

1
. . .
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
. . .
1285

A Woman's Farewell.

© Arthur Henry Adams

SO with this farewell kiss I taste at last
The all of life; the Future and the Past
Upon your dear lips dwell.
Love will not come again, though I implore;

A Small Moment by Cornelius Eady: American Life in Poetry #197 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2

I suspect that one thing some people have against reading poems is that they are so often so serious, so devoid of joy, as if we poets spend all our time brooding about mutability and death and never having any fun. Here Cornelius Eady, who lives and teaches in Indiana, offers us a poem of pure pleasure.

Ballad of Reading Gaol - I

© Oscar Wilde

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

The Way of Wooing

© William Schwenck Gilbert

A maiden sat at her window wide,

Pretty enough for a Prince's bride,

Love Increased By Suffering

© William Cowper

"I love the Lord," is still the strain
This heart delights to sing:
But I reply--your thoughts are vain,
Perhaps 'tis no such thing.

Love Inthron'd. Ode

© Richard Lovelace

I.
Introth, I do my self perswade,
That the wilde boy is grown a man,
And all his childishnesse off laid,

The Perpetual Wooing

© Eugene Field

The dull world clamors at my feet

And asks my hand and helping sweet;

Lost!

© Leon Gellert

A moon upon a moonlit sea

To me thou art;

Robert Parkes

© Henry Kendall

High travelling winds by royal hill
Their awful anthem sing,
And songs exalted flow and fill
The caverns of the spring.

Leavetaking

© Ibn Jakh

On the morning they left
we said goodbye
filled with sadness
for the absence to come.

Three Songs Of The Enigma

© Robert Nichols

The hopeless rain, a sigh, a shadow
Falters and drifts again, again over the meadow,
It wanders lost, drifts hither . . . thither,
It blows, it goes, it knows not whither.

To Greville Matheson MacDonald

© George MacDonald

First, most, to thee, my son, I give this book

In which a friend's and brother's verses blend

An Elective Course

LINES FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF A HARVARD UNDERGRADUATE

The bloom that lies on Fanny's cheek

Granny

Here, in her elbow chair, she sits
A soul alert, alive,
A poor old body shrunk and bent-
The queen-bee of the hive.

Masnawi

In the prologue to the Masnavi Rumi hailed Love and its sweet madness that heals all infirmities, and he exhorted the reader to burst the bonds to silver and gold to be free. The Beloved is all in all and is only veiled by the lover. Rumi identified the first cause of all things as God and considered all second causes subordinate to that. Human minds recognize the second causes, but only prophets perceive the action of the first cause. One story tells of a clever rabbit who warned the lion about another lion and showed the lion his own image in a well, causing him to attack it and drown. After delivering his companions from the tyrannical lion, the rabbit urges them to engage in the more difficult warfare against their own inward lusts. In a debate between trusting God and human exertion, Rumi quoted the prophet Muhammad as saying, "Trust in God, yet tie the camel's leg."8 He also mentioned the adage that the worker is the friend of God; so in trusting in providence one need not neglect to use means. Exerting oneself can be giving thanks for God's blessings; but he asked if fatalism shows gratitude.

God is hidden and has no opposite, not seen by us yet seeing us. Form is born of the formless but ultimately returns to the formless. An arrow shot by God cannot remain in the air but must return to God. Rumi reconciled God's agency with human free will and found the divine voice in the inward voice. Those in close communion with God are free, but the one who does not love is fettered by compulsion. God is the agency and first cause of our actions, but human will as the second cause finds recompense in hell or with the Friend. God is like the soul, and the world is like the body. The good and evil of bodies comes from souls. When the sanctuary of true prayer is revealed to one, it is shameful to turn back to mere formal religion. Rumi confirmed Muhammad's view that women hold dominion over the wise and men of heart; but violent fools, lacking tenderness, gentleness, and friendship, try to hold the upper hand over women, because they are swayed by their animal nature. The human qualities of love and tenderness can control the animal passions. Rumi concluded that woman is a ray of God and the Creator's self.

The Son

© Jones Very

Father, I wait thy word. The sun doth stand

Beneath the mingling line of night and day,

The Passion Of Love's Power.

Touch me, from out your breast of love,
With such white hands that be
As beautiful as a dream of
Your lips' virginity;

Jorasse was in his three-and-twentieth year;
Graceful and active as a stag just roused;
Gentle withal, and pleasant in his speech,
Yet seldom seen to smile. He had grown up