Love poems
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Sisina
© Charles Baudelaire
Imaginez Diane en galant équipage,
Parcourant les forêts ou battant les halliers,
Cheveux et gorge au vent, s'enivrant de tapage,
Superbe et défiant les meilleurs cavaliers!
Autumn Plaint
© Stéphane Mallarme
Since Maria left me to go to another star - which one, Orion, Altair - or
you green Venus? - I have always loved solitude. How many long days I have passed alone with my cat. By alone I mean without a material being, and my cat is a mystic companion, a spirit. I can say then that I have passed long days alone with my cat and alone with one of the last authors of the Roman decadence; for since the white creature is no more I have loved, uniquely and strangely, everything summed up in the word: fall. So, in the year, my favourite season is the last slow part of summer that just precedes autumn, and, in the day, the hour when I walk is when the sun hesitates before vanishing, with rays of yellow bronze over the grey walls, and rays of red copper over the tiles. Literature, also, from which my spirit asks voluptuousness, that will be the agonised poetry of Romes last moments, so long as it does not breathe a breath of the reinvigorated stance of the Barbarians or stammer in childish Latin like Christian prose. I was reading then one of those dear poems (whose flakes of rouge have more charm for me than young flesh), and dipping a hand into the pure animal fur, when a street organ sounded languishingly and sadly under my window. It was playing in the great alley of poplars whose leaves, even in spring, seem mournful to me since Maria passed by them, on her last journey, lying among candles. The instrument of sadnesses, yes, certainly: the piano flashes, the violin gives off light from its torn fibres, but the street organ in memorys half-light made me dream despairingly. Now it murmured a delightfully common song that filled the faubourgs with joy, an old, banal tune: why did its words pierce my soul and make me cry, like any romantic ballad? I savoured it slowly and did not throw a coin through the window for fear of troubling my spirit and discovering that not only the instrument was playing.
The Mistress Of Vision
© Francis Thompson
Secret was the garden;
Set i' the pathless awe
Where no star its breath can draw.
Life, that is its warden,
Sits behind the fosse of death. Mine eyes saw not,
and I saw.
Dagon Before The Ark
© John Newton
When first to make my heart his own,
The Lord revealed his mighty grace;
Self reigned, like Dagon, on the throne,
But could not long maintain its place.
The Winds Of War-News
© Henry Van Dyke
The winds of war-news change and veer:
Now westerly and full of cheer,
Songs In A Cornfield
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
Where is he gone to
And why does he stay?
He came across the green sea
But for a day,
Across the deep green sea
To help with the hay.
From: Time In The Rock
© Conrad Aiken
These things do not perplex, these things are simple,
but what of the heart that wishes to survive change
and cannot, its love lost in confusions and dismay?
what of the thought dispersed in its own algebras,
hypothesis proved fallacy? what of the will
which finds its aim unworthy? Are these, too, simple?
The Summer Sea
© Charles Kingsley
Soft soft wind, from out the sweet south sliding,
Waft thy silver cloud webs athwart the summer sea;
Thin thin threads of mist on dewy fingers twining
Weave a veil of dappled gauze to shade my babe and me.
The Lark Ascending
© George Meredith
He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound
A Story Of Doom: Book IX.
© Jean Ingelow
The prayer of Noah. The man went forth by night
And listened; and the earth was dark and still,
A Maori Girl's Song
© Alfred Domett
"Alas, and well-a-day! they are talking of me still:
By the tingling of my nostril, I fear they are talking ill;
Poor hapless I - poor little I - so many mouths to fill -
And all for this strange feeling - O, this sad, sweet pain!
The children of the Mist
© Frank Dalby Davison
Through the valleys, softly creeping
Mid the tree-tops, tempest-tossed,
Thoughts on Predestination and Reprobation : Part II.
© John Byrom
Pagan - said I - I must retract the word,
For the poor Pagans were not so absurd:
The Torments Of Love
© Sappho
O Queens of Song, descend from your home.
From the golden halls of Olumpus on high!
A Madrigal
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
Dream days of fond delight and hours
As rosy-hued as dawn, are mine.
Love's drowsy wine,
Brewed from the heart of Passion flowers,
Flows softly o'er my lips
And save thee, all the world is in eclipse.
The Crusader
© Letitia Elizabeth Landon
They pointed him to a barren plain,
Where his father, his brothers, his kinsmen were slain;
They shewed him the lowly grave, where slept
The maiden, whose scarf he so truly had kept;
But they could not shew him one living thing,
To which his withered heart could cling -
To Bayard Taylor Beyond Us
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
AS here within I watch the fervid coals,
While the chill heavens without shine wanly white,
I wonder, friend! in what rare realm of souls,
You hail the uprising Christmas-tide to-night!
A Recompense
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
The hound that followed at my heel
Looked up with eyes so full of love
I kissed the curly brows between
And blessed the God above.
Foresight And Patience
© George Meredith
Sprung of the father blood, the mother brain,
Are they who point our pathway and sustain.
They rarely meet; one soars, one walks retired.
When they do meet, it is our earth inspired.
Love Is Strong
© Richard Francis Burton
A VIEWLESS thing is the wind,
But its strength is mightier far
