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Love Poem Collection - 49
Sonnet CXLVII by William Shakespeare
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
At random from the truth vainly express'd;
For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
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The Fire at Tranter Sweatley’s by Thomas Hardy
They had long met o’ Zundays—her true love and she—
And at junketings, maypoles, and flings;
But she bode wi’ a thirtover uncle, and he
Swore by noon and by night that her goodman should be
Naibor Sweatley—a gaffer oft weak at the knee
From taking o’ sommat more cheerful than tea—
Who tranted, and moved people’s things.
She cried, “O pray pity me!” Nought would he hear;
Then with wild rainy eyes she obeyed,
She chid when her Love was for clinking off wi’ her.
The pa’son was told, as the season drew near
To throw over pu’pit the names of the peäir
As fitting one flesh to be made.
The wedding-day dawned and the morning drew on;
The couple stood bridegroom and bride;
The evening was passed, and when midnight had gone
The folks horned out, “God save the King,” and anon
The two home-along gloomily hied.
The lover Tim Tankens mourned heart-sick and drear
To be thus of his darling deprived:
He roamed in the dark ath’art field, mound, and mere,
And, a’most without knowing it, found himself near
The house of the tranter, and now of his Dear,
Where the lantern-light showed ’em arrived.
The bride sought her cham’er so calm and so pale
That a Northern had thought her resigned;
But to eyes that had seen her in tide-times of weal,
Like the white cloud o’ smoke, the red battlefield’s vail,
That look spak’ of havoc behind.
The bridegroom yet laitered a beaker to drain,
Then reeled to the linhay for more,
When the candle-snoff kindled some chaff from his grain—
Flames spread, and red vlankers, wi’ might and wi’ main,
And round beams, thatch, and chimley-tun roar.
Young Tim away yond, rafted up by the light,
Through brimble and underwood tears,
Till he comes to the orchet, when crooping thereright
In the lewth of a codlin-tree, bivering wi’ fright,
Wi’ on’y her night-rail to screen her from sight,
His lonesome young Barbree appears.
Her cwold little figure half-naked he views
Played about by the frolicsome breeze,
Her light-tripping totties, her ten little tooes,
All bare and besprinkled wi’ Fall’s chilly dews,
While her great gallied eyes, through her hair hanging loose,
Sheened as stars through a tardle o’ trees.
She eyed en; and, as when a weir-hatch is drawn,
Her tears, penned by terror afore,
With a rushing of sobs in a shower were strawn,
Till her power to pour ’em seemed wasted and gone
From the heft o’ misfortune she bore.
“O Tim, my own Tim I must call ’ee—I will!
All the world ha’ turned round on me so!
Can you help her who loved ’ee, though acting so ill?
Can you pity her misery—feel for her still?
When worse than her body so quivering and chill
Is her heart in its winter o’ woe!
“I think I mid almost ha’ borne it,” she said,
“Had my griefs one by one come to hand;
But O, to be slave to thik husbird for bread,
And then, upon top o’ that, driven to wed,
And then, upon top o’ that, burnt out o’ bed,
Is more than my nater can stand!”
Tim’s soul like a lion ’ithin en outsprung—
(Tim had a great soul when his feelings were wrung)—
“Feel for ’ee, dear Barbree?” he cried;
And his warm working-jacket about her he flung,
Made a back, horsed her up, till behind him she clung
Like a chiel on a gipsy, her figure uphung
By the sleeves that around her he tied.
Over piggeries, and mixens, and apples, and hay,
They lumpered straight into the night;
And finding bylong where a halter-path lay,
At dawn reached Tim’s house, on’y seen on their way
By a naibor or two who were up wi’ the day;
But they gathered no clue to the sight.
Then tender Tim Tankens he searched here and there
For some garment to clothe her fair skin;
But though he had breeches and waistcoats to spare,
He had nothing quite seemly for Barbree to wear,
Who, half shrammed to death, stood and cried on a chair
At the caddle she found herself in.
There was one thing to do, and that one thing he did,
He lent her some clouts of his own,
And she took ’em perforce; and while in ’em she slid,
Tim turned to the winder, as modesty bid,
Thinking, “O that the picter my duty keeps hid
To the sight o’ my eyes mid be shown!”
In the tallet he stowed her; there huddied she lay,
Shortening sleeves, legs, and tails to her limbs;
But most o’ the time in a mortal bad way,
Well knowing that there’d be the divel to pay
If ’twere found that, instead o’ the elements’ prey,
She was living in lodgings at Tim’s.
“Where’s the tranter?” said men and boys; “where can er be?”
“Where’s the tranter?” said Barbree alone.
“Where on e’th is the tranter?” said everybod-y:
They sifted the dust of his perished roof-tree,
And all they could find was a bone.
Then the uncle cried, “Lord, pray have mercy on me!”
And in terror began to repent.
But before ’twas complete, and till sure she was free,
Barbree drew up her loft-ladder, tight turned her key—
Tim bringing up breakfast and dinner and tea—
Till the news of her hiding got vent.
Then followed the custom-kept rout, shout, and flare
Of a skimmington-ride through the naiborhood, ere
Folk had proof o’ wold Sweatley’s decay.
Whereupon decent people all stood in a stare,
Saying Tim and his lodger should risk it, and pair:
So he took her to church. An’ some laughing lads there
Cried to Tim, “After Sweatley!” She said, “I declare
I stand as a maiden to-day!”
= = = = = = = = = =
The Blossing Of The Solitary Date-Tree by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I
Beneath the blaze of a tropical sun the mountain peaks are the Thrones of
Frost, through the absence of objects to reflect the rays. 'What no one
with us shares, seems scarce our own.' The presence of a ONE,
The best belov'd, who loveth me the best,
is for the heart, what the supporting air from within is for the hollow
globe with its suspended car. Deprive it of this, and all without, that
would have buoyed it aloft even to the seat of the gods, becomes a burthen
and crushes it into flatness.
II
The finer the sense for the beautiful and the lovely, and the fairer and
lovelier the object presented to the sense; the more exquisite the
individual's capacity of joy, and the more ample his means and
opportunities of enjoyment, the more heavily will he feel the ache of
solitariness, the more unsubstantial becomes the feast spread around him.
What matters it, whether in fact the viands and the ministering graces are
shadowy or real, to him who has not hand to grasp nor arms to embrace them?
III
Hope, Imagination, honourable Aims,
Free Commune with the choir that cannot die,
Science and Song, delight in little things,
The buoyant child surviving in the man;
Fields, forests, ancient mountains, ocean, sky,
With all their voices--O dare I accuse
My earthly lot as guilty of my spleen,
Or call my destiny niggard! O no! no!
It is her largeness, and her overflow,
Which being incomplete, disquieteth me so!
IV
For never touch of gladness stirs my heart,
But tim'rously beginning to rejoice
Like a blind Arab, that from sleep doth start
In lonesome tent, I listen for thy voice.
Belovéd! 'tis not thine ; thou art not there!
Then melts the bubble into idle air,
And wishing without hope I restlessly despair.
V
The mother with anticipated glee
Smiles o'er the child, that, standing by her chair
And flatt'ning its round cheek upon her knee,
Looks up, and doth its rosy lips prepare
To mock the coming sounds. At that sweet sight
She hears her own voice with a new delight;
And if the babe perchance should lisp the notes aright,
VI
Then is she tenfold gladder than before!
But should disease or chance the darling take,
What then avail those songs, which sweet of yore
Were only sweet for their sweet echo's sake?
Dear maid! no prattler at a mother's knee
Was e'er so dearly prized as I prize thee:
Why was I made for Love and Love denied to me?
= = = = = = = = = =
Come, My Beloved, Hear From Me by Robert Louis Stevenson
Come, my beloved, hear from me
Tales of the woods or open sea.
Let our aspiring fancy rise
A wren's flight higher toward the skies;
Or far from cities, brown and bare,
Play at the least in open air.
In all the tales men hear us tell
Still let the unfathomed ocean swell,
Or shallower forest sound abroad
Below the lonely stars of God;
In all, let something still be done,
Still in a corner shine the sun,
Slim-ankled maids be fleet of foot,
Nor man disown the rural flute.
Still let the hero from the start
In honest sweat and beats of heart
Push on along the untrodden road
For some inviolate abode.
Still, O beloved, let me hear
The great bell beating far and near-
The odd, unknown, enchanted gong
That on the road hales men along,
That from the mountain calls afar,
That lures a vessel from a star,
And with a still, aerial sound
Makes all the earth enchanted ground.
Love, and the love of life and act
Dance, live and sing through all our furrowed tract;
Till the great God enamoured gives
To him who reads, to him who lives,
That rare and fair romantic strain
That whoso hears must hear again.
= = = = = = = = = =
Limbo by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The sole true Something--This! In Limbo Den
It frightens Ghosts as Ghosts here frighten men--
For skimming in the wake it mock'd the care
Of the old Boat-God for his Farthing Fare;
Tho' Irus' Ghost itself he ne'er frown'd blacker on,
The skin and skin-pent Druggist crost the Acheron,
Styx, and with Puriphlegethon Cocytus,--
(The very names, methinks, might thither fright us--)
Unchang'd it cross'd--& shall some fated Hour
Be pulveris'd by Demogorgon's power
And given as poison to annilate Souls--
Even now It shrinks them! they shrink in as Moles
(Nature's mute Monks, live Mandrakes of the ground)
Creep back from Light--then listen for its Sound;--
See but to dread, and dread they know not why--
The natural Alien of their negative Eye.
'Tis a strange place, this Limbo!--not a Place,
Yet name it so;--where Time & weary Space
Fettered from flight, with night-mair sense of fleeing,
Strive for their last crepuscular half-being;--
Lank Space, and scytheless Time with branny hands
Barren and soundless as the measuring sands,
Not mark'd by flit of Shades,--unmeaning they
As Moonlight on the dial of the day!
But that is lovely--looks like Human Time,--
An Old Man with a steady Look sublime,
That stops his earthly Task to watch the skies;
But he is blind--a Statue hath such Eyes;--
Yet having moon-ward turn'd his face by chance,
Gazes the orb with moon-like countenance,
With scant white hairs, with foretop bald & high,
He gazes still,--his eyeless Face all Eye;--
As 'twere an organ full of silent Sight,
His whole Face seemeth to rejoice in Light!
Lip touching lip, all moveless, bust and limb,
He seems to gaze at that which seems to gaze on him!
No such sweet sights doth Limbo Den immure,
Wall'd round, and made a Spirit-jail secure,
By the mere Horror of blank Naught-at-all,
Whose circumambience doth these Ghosts enthral.
A lurid thought is growthless, dull Privation,
Yet that is but a Purgatory curse;
Hell knows a fear far worse,
A fear--a future fate.--'Tis positive Negation!
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