127 quotes
We, drinking love at the furthest springs,
Covered with love as a covering tree,
We had grown as gods, as the gods above,
Filled from the heart to the lips with love,
Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings,
O love, my love, had you loved but me!
Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)
I remember the way we parted,
The day and the way we met;
You hoped we were both broken-hearted
And knew we should both forget.
Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)
I can truly say with Shelley that I have been fortunate in friendships: that I have been no less fortunate in my enemies than in my friends.
His speech is a burning fire.
Atalanta in Calydon (1865)
Death, if thou wilt, fain would I plead with thee:
Canst thou not spare, of all our hopes have built,
One shelter where our spirits fain would be
Death, if thou wilt?
There was a bad poet named Clough,
Whom his friends all united to puff.
But the public, though dull,
Has not quite such a skull
As belongs to believers in Clough.
Loves that are lost ere they come to birth,
Weeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth.
I lose what I long for, save what I can,
My love, my love, and no love for me!
Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)
Will you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss,
Meet mine, and see where the great love is,
And tremble and turn and be changed? Content you;
The gate is strait; I shall not be there.
Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)
Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon,
If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live;
And to give thanks
Poems and Ballads: Second Series (1878)
In fierce March weather
White waves break tether,
And whirled together
At either hand,
Like weeds uplifted
The tree trunks rifted.
And lo, between the sundawn and the sun
His day's work and his night's work are undone:
And lo, between the nightfall and the light,
He is not, and none knoweth of such an one.
Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)
All gifts but one the jealous God may keep
From our soul's longing, one he cannot—sleep.
This, though he grudge all other grace to prayer,
This grace his closed hand cannot choose but spare.
Being come to flood and fullness now, the tide
Is risen in mine as in the sea's own heart
To tempest and to triumph. Not for nought
Am I that wild wife's bridegroom — old and hoar,
Not sapless yet nor soulless.
Marino Faliero (1885)
O Love, O great god Love, what have I done,
That thou shouldst hunger so after my death?
My heart is harmless as my life's first day:
Seek out some false fair woman, and plague her
Till her tears even as my tears fill her bed.
I will go back to the great sweet mother,
Mother and lover of men, the sea.
I will go down to her, I and no other,
Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me.
Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)
In the world of dreams, I have chosen my part.
To sleep for a season and hear no word
Of true love's truth or of light love's art,
Only the song of a secret bird.
Ah, yet would God this flesh of mine might be
Where air might wash and long leaves cover me;
Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers,
Or where the wind's feet shine along the sea.
Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)
I that have love and no more
Give you but love of you, sweet;
He that hath more, let him give;
He that hath wings, let him soar;
Mine is the heart at your feet
Here, that must love you to live.
For thee, O now a silent soul, my brother,
Take at my hands this garland and farewell.
Thin is the leaf, and chill the wintry smell,
And chill the solemn earth, a fatal mother.
These were a part of the playing I heard
Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife;
Love that sings and hath wings as a bird,
Balm of the wound and heft of the knife.
Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)