Love poetry

“ Love is the poetry of the senses. ”

“ Hers is the real and uncentred poetry of being, which pervades and surrounds her as with an air, which peoples her visions and animates her love, which shrinks from earth into itself, and finds marvel and meditation in all that it beholds within, and which spreads even over the heaven in whose faith she so ardently believes the mystery and the tenderness of romance. ”

“ In fact, love is at once the poetry of life, and the life of poetry. Love has inspired, in every age, the brightest dreams of fancy and the noblest con- ceptions of literature and of art, constituting the perpetual theme which animates the writer's pen and tunes the poet's lyre. Love reposes in the sculptor's marble ; love blushes upon the painter's canvas. And all these various embodiments of love by literature and art are universally appreciated and admired ; for the pen, the chisel, and the pencil have only given expression to the gen- eral sentiment of mankind. ”

“ This feeling, it may be hoped, will gradually win for itself the same freedom in life as it already possesses in poetry. The flowering, as well as the budding of love will then be a secret between the lovers, and only its fruit will be a matter between them and society. ”

“ I never was in love - yet the voice and the shape of a Woman has haunted me these two days - at such a time when the relief, the feverous relief of Poetry seems a much less crime - This morning Poetry has conquered - I have relapsed into those abstractions which are my only life - I feel escaped from a new strange and threatening sorrow. ”

“ As love invests the most homely personal attributes with indefinite charm, so poetry, in its highest, widest, and largest sense, throws a halo over the common-place phases of existence, touches everything with a golden light, and makes it beautiful. ”

“ Is it then true that the dew drops fall from the night when I am seen, and the morning light is glad when it wraps my body?
Is it true, is it true, that your love travelled alone through ages and worlds in search of me? that when you found me at last, your age-long desire found utter peace in my gentle speech, and my eyes and lips and flowing hair?
Is it then true that the mystery of the Infinite is written on this little brow of mine?
Tell me, my lover, if all this is true!
IX
With a glance of your eyes you could plunder all the wealth of songs struck from poets’ harps, fair woman! ”

“ Daughter of an enslaved land, an angel in love, a demon in imagination, a child in faith, an old man in experience, a man in brain, a woman in heart, a giant in hope, a mother in suffering and a poet in your dreams,—this work, in which your love and your fancy, your faith, your experience, your suffering, your hopes and your dreams are like chains by which hangs a web less lovely than the poetry cherished in your soul—the poetry whose expression when it lights up your countenance is, to those who admire you, what the characters of a lost language are to the learned—this work is yours. ”

“ Lay it aside with thine unfastened zone,
And love him with the love that knows not fear,
[95]
Because it fears not change; enter thou in,
Flower of all sweet and stainless womanhood!
For ever to grow bright, for ever new;
Enter beneath the flowers, O flower-fair!
Beneath these tendrils, Loveliest! that entwine
And clasp, and wreathe and cling, with kissing stems;
Enter, with tender-blowing airs of heaven,
Soft as love's breath and gentle as the tones
Of lover's whispers, when the lips come close:
Enter the house of Love, O loveliest! ”

“ I never discussed any more profound topic with my sweetheart than love—and perhaps poetry and music. Sometimes, as I sit and listen to you two, I can't half believe that you are lovers. It's so perfectly absurd. You talk about everything on earth. ”

“ I tell you that there is no love in which you can find as much poetry as in the love of those dear couples who for forty or fifty years have walked side by side loving, respecting, helping each other, dreaming, praying, suffering together, and whose actions, words, and thoughts have each added an item to that treasure which they can now count piece by piece. ”

“ But the day comes sooner or later to the married pair, when the prose pages must be turned, and poetry relegated to the background, days on which the reality of life, in all its grim nakedness, seems to banish romance, and when love needs all its strength and staying power for the fight. ”

“ Love has a fair claim to its title of the master passion, despite the arguments made in behalf of friendship and ambition respectively, and whether supremacy over human conduct, or its service to the artistic imagination, be the less. Almost every narrative-poem, novel, or drama, whatsoever other threads its coil may carry, seems to have love for a central strand. ”

“ The illusion of the feelings commonly called love, has hitherto been the inspiring influence of modern poetry and romance, and has exercised a humanizing if not a strengthening influence on the world. ”

“ A great poet has seldom sung of lawfully-wedded happiness, but often of free and secret love; and in this respect too the time is coming when there will no longer be one standard of morality for poetry and another for life. ”

“ Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wallflowers need ruins to make them grow.' If, that is, I am forced to confess that poetry and romance are absent, I will resolutely stick to it that poetry and romance are bad things, even though the love of them is the strongest propensity of my nature. ”

“ The song within your heart could never rise Until love bade it spread its wings and soar. Nor could you look on Beauty's face before A poet's burning mouth had touched your eyes. Love is made out of ecstasy and wonder; Love is a poignant and accustomed pain. ”

“ Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings; ”

“ From her deep soul I draw my peace, and thus, One wreath of rhyme I weave for both of us.
THE SHRINE Were I but as the master souls who move In their high place, immortal on the earth, My song might be a thing to crown her worth,— ‘Tis but a pathway for the feet of Love. But since she walks where I am fain to sing, Since she has said, “I listen, O my friend!” There is a glory lent the song I send, And I am proud, yes, prouder than a king. ”

“ And why is it that affection, as exhibited in general life, is so rarely seen unstained by the tint of some darker passion? Love on, fair girl—love on in thy purity and innocence! The beauty that thou seest in nature, and the music it sends forth, exist only in thy own heart, and the light which plays around thee like a glory, is only the reflection of that image whose lustre has taken away the shadows from thy spirit! ”

“ Scatter them back to the ivory gate and be alone and rule the night.
Surely all worlds are nothing to Love, for Love to flash thro’ the night and come;
Hither and thither he flies at will, with thee he dwelleth—there is his home.
Come, O Love, with a voice, a message; haste, O Love, on thy wings of light.
Love, I am calling thee, Love, I am calling; dost thou not hear my crying, sweet?
Does not the live air throb with the pain of my beating heart, till thy heart beat?—
Surely momently thou wilt be here, surely, O sweet Love, momently.{23} ”

“ Item: To lovers, I devise their imaginary world, with whatever they may need, as the stars of the sky, the red roses by the wall, the bloom of the hawthorn, the sweet strains of music, and aught else by which they may desire to figure to each other the lastingness and beauty of their love. ”

“ And send this clarion ringing down the sky:
"I love, I love, I love, and Love is glorious!"
The definition chosen need not hamper the most "modern" poet nor restrict his choice of subject, for there are few things that cannot awaken both thought and emotion if looked at in the right way. ”

“ Those came to me in thy musing moods,
When I sat as I'm sitting now,
And marked the creeping of light and shade
O'er the pride of thy kingly brow.
Swell on! swell on! ye rippling waves,
And rise, and fall, and die!
Bend down thy gaze, eloquent one!
While the bark of our love sweeps by.
See! see—but my hand is still.
Which over the harp-strings stole—
The beautiful dream of our love and faith
Is life to my thrilling soul. ”

“ What gives to the old love-songs their peculiar felicity, their undecaying brightness, is this constant sounding of a personal note; this artless candor with which we are taken by the hand and led straight into the lady's presence, are bidden to admire her beauty and her wit, are freely reminded of her faults and her caprices, and are taught, with many a sigh and tear, and laughter bubbling throughout all, what a delicious and unprofitable pastime is the love-making of a poet. ”

“ How this new affection seems to spread a soft, fresh green over the soul. Does not the whole heart blossom thick with plants of hope, sparkling with perpetual dew-drops? What a loss, had we passed through the world, without tasting this purest, most exquisite fount of love. ”

“ Why, asks the impatient reader, should not a romance be always full of this glow, and colour, and passion? The warm light that touches the oval outline of a tender woman's face is a beautiful thing, and even the sadness of love is beautiful: why should not a romance be full of these supreme elements? Why should not the romancist cut out the long prose passages of a man's life, and give us only those wonderful moments in which being glows with a sort of transformation? ”

“ you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart’s-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty. ”

“ "Her soul seems to have been made up of love and poetry . ”

“ Ah, no! love is not always pain; [Pg 36]
For see, the folds are drawn aside,
And dimly there may be descried
A shadowy form of shadowy grace,
That halts while still in gloom arrayed,
With eyes that light the tawny face
And tresses darker than the shade.
O spell of song! O power and thrill
Of love! O dream that sways
The blood of youth, that feels no chill
Till love betrays!
O hark! ye sprites that haunt this time,—
This quiet moon-lit hour,
When Cupid weaves, in every clime,
His web of subtlest power,—
O, can ye hear, and not rejoice,
The music of a maiden's voice? ”

“ Up then she rose and took his hand
And never a moment did they stand.
“Come, love,” she cried, “the ways I know,
How thick soe’er the thickets grow.
O love, I love thee! O thine heart!
How mighty and how kind thou art!” ”

“ So shall I live, supposing thou art true,
Like a deceived husband; so love's face
May still seem love to me, though alter'd new;
Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place:
For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
Therefore in that I cannot know thy change.
In many's looks, the false heart's history
Is writ in moods, and frowns, and wrinkles strange.
But heaven in thy creation did decree
That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;
Whate'er thy thoughts, or thy heart's workings be,
Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell. ”

“ Birds, that cry so loud in the old, green bowery garden,
Your song is of Love! Love! Love!
Will ye weary not nor cease?
For the loveless soul grows sick, the heart that the grey days harden;
I know too well that ye love! I would ye should hold your peace.
I too have seen Love rise, like a star; I have marked his setting;
I dreamed in my folly and pride that Life without Love were peace.
But if Love should await me yet, in the land of sleep and forgetting—
Ah, bird, could you sing me this, I would not your song should cease! ”

“ The eye glows with noble desire; enthusiasm shines from that fair brow, surmounted only by clustering curls, not yet by the laurel wreath. He is a poet. The wondrous smile of love, of life, is on his lips; romance dwells in these thoughtful eyes, drollery in the cheeks' roguish curves. ”

“ I see the vast alembic ever working, I see and know the flames that heat the world, The glow, the blush, the beating hearts of lovers, So blissful happy some, and some so silent, dark, and nigh to death; Love, that is all the earth to lovers—love, that mocks time and space, Love, that is day and night—love, that is sun and moon and stars, Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with perfume, No other words but words of love, no other thought but love. ”

“ As the alarmed heart leaps in the breast,
And knows and names and greets its godlike guest—
Thus doth Love speak.
How does Love speak?
In the proud spirit suddenly grown meek—
The haughty heart grown humble; in the tender
And unnamed light that floods the world with splendor;
In the resemblance which the fond eyes trace
In all fair things to one beloved face;
In the shy touch of hands that thrill and tremble ”

“ Then again, too, she felt to perfection the fine wonder, the fine glow of a great inspiration, and realised anew that therein all the pleasures of the senses added together are contained; that inspiration in its higher manifestations is like love—that it is love, in fact—love without the lover ”

“ Would have read the legend of my passion, known the bitter secret of my heart,
Kissed as we have kissed, but never parted as we two are fated now to part.
For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by the cankerworm of truth,
And no hand can gather up the fallen withered petals of the rose of youth. ”

“ She sang, “O look on me, and look on Love:
We three are here together, and above—
What heaven may there be?
None for thine heart without this spell of mine,
Yea, this my beauty, yea, these limbs that shine
And make thy senses shudder; and for me,
No heaven without thee!
“O, all the passion in me on this day
Rises into one song to sweep away
The breakers of Love’s bond;
For is it not a pleasant bond indeed,
And made of all the flowers in life’s mead?
And is not Love a master fair and fond? ”