1247 Love poems

You rose from our embrace and the small light spread like an aureole around you. The long parabola of neck and shoulder, flank and thigh I saw permute itself through unfolding and unlimited minuteness in the movement of your tall tread, the spine-root swaying, the Picasso-like éclat of scissoring slender legs. I knew some law of Being was at work. At one time I had said that love bestows such values, and so it does, but the old man in his canto was right and wise: ubi amor ibi ocullus est. Always I wanted to give and in wanting was the poet. A man now, aging, I know the best of love is not to bestow, but to recognize.

To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eyed, Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride, Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned In process of the seasons have I seen, Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned, Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green. Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand, Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived; So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived: For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred: Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, Can yet the lease of my true love control, Suppos'd as forfeit to a confin'd doom. The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur'd And the sad augurs mock their own presage; Incertainties now crown themselves assur'd And peace proclaims olives of endless age. Now with the drops of this most balmy time My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes, Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme, While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes; And thou in this shalt find thy monument, When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.

O! never say that I was false of heart, Though absence seemed my flame to qualify. As easy might I from myself depart As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie: That is my home of love; if I have ranged, Like him that travels, I return again, Just to the time, not with the time exchanged, So that myself bring water for my stain. Never believe, though in my nature reigned All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood, That it could so preposterously be stained, To leave for nothing all thy sum of good; For nothing this wide universe I call, Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand'ring bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me prov'd, I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy pow’r Dost hold time’s fickle glass his sickle hour, Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow’st— In nature, sovereign mistress over wrack, As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back, She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill May time disgrace, and wretched minute kill. Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure; She may detain but not still keep her treasure. Her audit, though delayed, answered must be, And her quietus is to render thee.

I lift—lift you five States away your glass, Wide of this bar you never graced, where none Ever I know came, where what work is done Even by these men I know not, where a brass Police-car sign peers in, wet strange cars pass, Soiled hangs the rag of day out over this town, A juke-box brains air where I drink alone, The spruce barkeep sports a toupee alas— My glass I lift at six o'clock, my darling, As you plotted . . Chinese couples shift in bed, We shared today not even filthy weather, Beasts in the hills their tigerish love are snarling, Suddenly they clash, I blow my short ash red, Grey eyes light! and we have our drink together.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.

Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan For that deep wound it gives my friend and me: Is’t not enough to torture me alone, But slave to slavery my sweet’st friend must be? Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken, And my next self thou harder hast engrossed; Of him, myself, and thee I am forsaken, A torment thrice threefold thus to be crossed. Prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward, But then my friend's heart let my poor heart bail; Whoe’er keeps me, let my heart be his guard: Thou canst not then use rigour in my jail. And yet thou wilt; for I, being pent in thee, Perforce am thine, and all that is in me.

So now I have confessed that he is thine, And I my self am mortgaged to thy will, Myself I’ll forfeit, so that other mine Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still: But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free, For thou art covetous, and he is kind; He learned but surety-like to write for me, Under that bond that him as fast doth bind. The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take, Thou usurer, that put’st forth all to use, And sue a friend came debtor for my sake; So him I lose through my unkind abuse. Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me: He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.