16 quotes
The loves and hours of the life of a man,
They are swift and sad, being born of the sea.
Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)
Our way is where God knows
And Love knows where:
We are in Love's hand to-day.
Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)
Surely most bitter of all sweet things thou art,
And sweetest thou of all things bitter, love.
Bothwell: A Tragedy (1874)
Even love, the beloved Republic, that feeds upon freedom and lives.
Songs before Sunrise (1871)
Love, as is told by the seers of old,
Comes as a butterfly tipped with gold,
Flutters and flies in sunlit skies,
Weaving round hearts that were one time cold.
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,
Green pasture or grey grief;
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf.
Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)
Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites,
Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.
Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)
Though one were fair as roses
His beauty clouds and closes.
Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)
Marvellous mercies and infinite love.
Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)
Sweet Love, that art so bitter.
Love laid his sleepless head
On a thorny rose bed:
And his eyes with tears were red,
And pale his lips as the dead.
Time found our tired love sleeping,
And kissed away his breath;
But what should we do weeping,
Though light love sleep to death?
We have drained his lips at leisure,
Till there's not left to drain
A single sob of pleasure,
A single pulse of pain.
Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)
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 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.
In the change of years, in the coil of things,
In the clamour and rumour of life to be,
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)
Before the beginning of years
There came to the making of man
Time with a gift of tears,
Grief with a glass that ran,
Pleasure with pain for leaven,
Summer with flowers that fell,
Remembrance fallen from heaven,
And Madness risen from hell,
Strength without hands to smite,
Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light,
And Life, the shadow of death.
Atalanta in Calydon (1865)