Love poems
/ page 411 of 1285 /
from Book I, Paterson
© William Carlos Williams
-Say it, no ideas but in things-
nothing but the blank faces of the houses
and cylindrical trees
bent, forked by preconception and accident-
split, furrowed, creased, mottled, stained-
secret-into the body of the light!
L' Allee
© Paul Verlaine
Powdered and rouged as in the sheepcotes' day,
Fragile 'mid her enormous ribbon bows,
The Bakchesarian Fountain
© Alexander Pushkin
Has treason scaled the harem's wall,
Whose height might treason's self appal,
And slavery's daughter fled his power,
To yield her to the daring Giaour?
Sonnet 76: She Comes, And Straight Therewith
© Sir Philip Sidney
She comes, and straight therewith her shining twins do move
Their rays to me, who in her tedious absence lay
Benighted in cold woe; but now appears my day,
The only light of joy, the only warmth of love.
Fain would I wed
© Thomas Campion
Fain would I wed a fair young man that night and day could please me,
When my mind or body grieved, that had the power to ease me.
Epistle (to the author of The Three Impostors)
© Voltaire
I see from afar that era coming, those happy days,
When philosophy, enlightening humanity,
Must lead them in peace to the feet of the common master;
Frightful fanaticism will tremble to appear there:
There will be less dogma with more virtue.
A Song For Christmas
© George MacDonald
Hark, in the steeple the dull bell swinging
Over the furrows ill ploughed by Death!
Hark the bird-babble, the loud lark singing!
Hark, from the sky, what the prophet saith!
Poem For The Two Hundred And Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Founding Of Harvard College
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
Thou whose bold flight would leave earth's vulgar crowds,
And like the eagle soar above the clouds,
Must feel the pang that fallen angels know
When the red lightning strikes thee from below!
If I Were Old
© William Henry Ogilvie
If I were old, a broken man and blind,
and one should lead me to Mid-Eildon's crest,
Morning
© Henry Reed
Look, my love, on the wall, and here, at this Eastern picture.
How still its scene, and neither of sleep nor waking:
No shadow falls from the tree or the golden mountain,
The boats on the glassy lake have no reflection,
No echo would come if you blew a horn in those valleys.
The Greater Cats
© Victoria Mary Sackville-West
The greater cats with golden eyes
Stare out between the bars.
A Panegyric Of The Dean In The Person Of A Lady In The North
© Jonathan Swift
Resolved my gratitude to show,
Thrice reverend Dean, for all I owe,
Too long I have my thanks delay'd;
Your favours left too long unpaid;
Extreme Unction
© James Russell Lowell
Go! leave me, Priest; my soul would be
Alone with the consoler, Death;
The Broomstick Train; Or, The Return Of The Witches
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
I don't feel sure of his being good,
But he happened to be in a pleasant mood,--
As fiends with their skins full sometimes are,--
(He'd been drinking with "roughs" at a Boston bar.)
So what does he do but up and shout
To a graybeard turnkey, "Let 'em out!"
Apart
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
COME not with empty words that say,
"Your strength of manhood wastes away
In long, ignoble, fruitless years!"
I live apart from pain and tears,
The Bestiary: or Orpheuss Procession
© Guillaume Apollinaire
Admire the vital power
And nobility of line:
Its the voice that the light made us understand here
That Hermes Trismegistus writes of in Pimander.
Deborah
© Thomas Parnell
O King subdu'd! O Woman born to fame!
O Wake my fancy for the glorious theme,
O wake my fancy with the sense of praise,
O wake with warblings of triumphant lays.
The Land you rise in sultry suns invade,
But where you rise to sing you'le find a shade.
Again Endorsing The Lady, II
© Franklin Pierce Adams
I thought that I was wholly free,
That I had Love upon the shelf;
"Hereafter," I declared in glee,
"I'll have my evenings to myself."
How can such mortal beauty live?
(Ah, Jove, thine errings I forgive!)
