Love Poems - Love Poetry - Love Poets

A Pretty Woman
Robert Browning

I.
That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers,
And the blue eye
Dear and dewy,
And that infantine fresh air of hers!
II.
To think men cannot take you, Sweet,
And enfold you,
Ay, and hold you,
And so keep you what they make you, Sweet!
III
You like us for a glance, you know---
For a word's sake
Or a sword's sake,
All's the same, whate'er the chance, you know.
IV.
And in turn we make you ours, we say---
You and youth too,
Eyes and mouth too,
All the face composed of flowers, we say.
V.
All's our own, to make the most of, Sweet---
Sing and say for,
Watch and pray for,
Keep a secret or go boast of, Sweet!
VI.
But for loving, why, you would not, Sweet,
Though we prayed you,
Paid you, brayed you
in a mortar---for you could not, Sweet!
VII.
So, we leave the sweet face fondly there:
Be its beauty
Its sole duty!
Let all hope of grace beyond, lie there!
VIII.
And while the face lies quiet there,
Who shall wonder
That I ponder
A conclusion? I will try it there.
IX.
As,---why must one, for the love foregone,
Scout mere liking?
Thunder-striking
Earth,---the heaven, we looked above for, gone!
X.
Why, with beauty, needs there money be,
Love with liking?
Crush the fly-king
In his gauze, because no honey-bee?
XI.
May not liking be so simple-sweet,
If love grew there
'Twould undo there
All that breaks the cheek to dimples sweet?
XII.
Is the creature too imperfect,
Would you mend it
And so end it?
Since not all addition perfects aye!
XIII.
Or is it of its kind, perhaps,
Just perfection---
Whence, rejection
Of a grace not to its mind, perhaps?
XIV.
Shall we burn up, tread that face at once
Into tinder,
And so hinder
Sparks from kindling all the place at once?
XV.
Or else kiss away one's soul on her?
Your love-fancies!
---A sick man sees
Truer, when his hot eyes roll on her!
XVI.
Thus the craftsman thinks to grace the rose,---
Plucks a mould-flower
For his gold flower,
Uses fine things that efface the rose:
XVII.
Rosy rubies make its cup more rose,
Precious metals
Ape the petals,---
Last, some old king locks it up, morose!
XVIII.
Then how grace a rose? I know a way!
Leave it, rather.
Must you gather?
Smell, kiss, wear it---at last, throw away!

 

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Love Poems 3 The Bungler by Amy Lowell (1874-1925)

Love Poems 4 Blue and White by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861-1907)

Love Poems 5 Desideria by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Love Poems 6 The Taxi by Amy Lowell (1874-1925)

Love Poems 7 Daffodils by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Love Poems 8 Song by Sir William Watson (1858-1935)

Love Poems 9 To a Butterfly by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Love Poems 10 Sonnet From the Portuguese V by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61)

Love Poems 11 She Tells Her Love by Robert Ranke Graves

Love Poems 12 It's all I have to bring to-day by Emily  Dickinson

Love Poems 13 I Never Lost As Much by Emily  Dickinson

Love Poems 14 Heart, We Will Forget Him by Emily  Dickinson

Love Poems 15 O Mistress Mine by William  Shakespeare

Love Poems 16 The Rose in the Deeps of his Heart by William Butler Yeats

Love Poems 17 Love by Robert  Browning

Love Poems 18 My Pretty Rose Tree by William  Blake

Love Poems 19 I Should Not Dare by Emily  Dickinson

Love Poems 20 One Day I Wrote Her Name by Edmund  Spenser

Love Poems 21 Tell me not, Sweet, by Richard  Lovelace

Love Poems 22 The Dream by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love Poems 23 The Dream by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love Poems 24 Hope is a Thing With Feathers by Emily  Dickinson

Love Poems 25 We Are Seven by William  Wordsworth

Love Poems 26 Mag by Carl  Sandburg

Love Poems 27 Ebb by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love Poems 28 I Sing by Emily  Dickinson

Love Poems 29 For Each Ecstatic Instant by Emily  Dickinson

Love Poems 30 Love Not Me by John  Wilbye

Love Poems 31 Mild Is The Parting Year by Walter Savage Landor

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