Love Poems

translated by Leo Zoutewelle To you my word will be reproached as lie, Maliciously: “who left you so maligned, In vain are all the days in which you pined For him who cheated you and made you cry.” But I have weighed your virgin heart before And know your strength...

O, Where Is Love? by James A. Tweedie O, where is love? You’ll find it in the pain _That binds a mother to her newborn child; _In bitter-broken friendships reconciled; _And in the kiss of lovers in the rain; In being kind and offering a smile _To hardened hearts too...

  Song of the Rose The rose awakens, ere the sky Has wakened to the sun; And we, my one true love and I, Awaken with a tender sigh, To love until the day has run And all our pains are done. We part the burdens of the breast, The...

  To You, My Wife a villanelle To you, my wife, my love I declare, My joy and gain, a gift to me blessed, A morning flower of beauty and flair! O flesh of mine, this heart you repair, Whenever sadness tramples my rest; To you, my wife, my love...

originally published on MacKenzie Lyric Poetry Oh, run with the sun and the wind in your hair! Before the day-star sets in the west: Love flowers best in the wide, open air. Behold! The noon-tide waxes not more fair Than you, my one, as these my lines attest. Oh, run...

Sandprints Yes: Life is pleasure, life is grand, __Life is sweet and fleeting; Alike a stroll upon the sand, __Alike a heart that’s beating In measured pace, step after step, __In meter through our days, We grow, we build, and then we ebb, __And then we wash away. The waves...

  Pale would be the water ____Reflecting only skies, Gracing not the splendor ____Of your enchanting eyes. Pale would be the moon ____That only marks its pace And fails to see the boon ____Of your much fairer face. Yet paler is the poet ____Whose words cannot express One word that...

  The Moon, torn from the Sun, her only lover, Rose, starry-eyed and weeping beams of light, A mourning widow left to wisp and hover, A torturously pitiable sight, Wan from the strain of sobbing out her eyes, Now crater-like and dark from sleepless grief, Still hoping that the Sun...

Faith I'm pond scum, someone said today. Some soup primordial, in a bay was struck by lightning. Oh, I see I'm wrought by electricity... then, look! it’s a bacterium who, in a deep delirium, decided he would rather be a worm that crawls out of the sea. From there it's...

Believe It True That you have made my world a wondrous garden Fair with your lips, and glad with your eyes of blue That you have wakened life’s song of gladness Believe it true, dear, believe it true. That I have found within that wondrous garden All passing hours made...

Her Love for Him My true love laughs, and angel choirs sing; The mountains echo back his tuneful mirth While Nature dances, heav’n in step with earth. ‘Tis music to mine ear; mine heart takes wing! Into my love’s embrace I fly secure, And tenderly he holds me in his...

  Leaf in Fall I feel hard without my love at my side; she is the part of me that lacks the soft buoyancy that rounds and bears me aloft into the spring sky mirrored in the tide… without her I wear my own prickly hide, itch in it like...

  I Spent My Youth with Byron and the Bard I spent my youth with Byron and the Bard, With Tennyson, the Brownings, and dear Keats— And full of passions, eager, trying hard To imitate their lofty, noble feats, I found it true: the human heart does pump In echo...

  I woke this day from napping, and I saw you lying there, Across the room, upon a couch, asleep without a care. The golden beams of twilight streaming through the windowpane, Shone wondrously upon you like a rainbow in the rain. Through moving trees, the filtered sunlight fell upon...

  I face the day with unexpected strength, to know we’ll meet when the sun has disappeared. Your hand in mine we’ll walk the forest’s length, with peace of mind and nothing to be feared. I know the day may bring me to my knee, And I know that they...

  It is a moment or a spot in time, When time is quieted and put away; A simple thing becoming the sublime, Suspended and eternal in a day And all around me just dissolves to naught; I feel my world around me disappears; It is just me before you—I...

Where the Heart Goes Where the heart decides to go, The feet must go along. The heart is first to know A thing is right or wrong. The heart knows who to trust. The heart knows who to fight. The feet go where they must Into the mists of night....

When we listen To his sweet song, Did he then know It'd live this long? A song that gives To every age, A timeless sense Of history's page. Reminding you, Reminding me, Love songs can last Eternity. From age-to-age Repeating ways Of loving one Across our days. We know it's...

That I Might Learn to Love a villanelle That I might learn to love I sorely prayed with hopes that God might teach me by romance as yearning I the empty sky surveyed. Yet lovers marched in cumbersome parade so out of step and void of real advance that I...

O how I long to hold thee in my arms, And taste again of nature’s sweet reprieve, To cast off masks, false affectations, charms; To savor all I had before you leave. For thee alone I lie awake at night, Tortured by the memories unmade, For that alone I scorn...

Today the Wind for Elizabeth Today the wind through winter’s unclad bones Drowns in its woeful howl my soul’s discant; Beyond, a distant hunter’s oliphant Salutes the dead beneath their frost-bound stones. Today the wind sweet music’s loss bemoans, No more to laud, beneath this canopy Of slate-grey clouds, thy...

  “Jingle Bells, jingle all the way” I sang to her to break the spell of what appeared to be her fell demeanor. Neither would she bray ‘in a one horse open sleigh’ “Hey!” but droned as if to undersell the joyous sense that all was well. She seemed more...

For Elizabeth On the Poet’s Eleventh Wedding Anniversary   Though you behold me silent in this room, Know that I walk in fields of fresh-cut hay; Though I be still, my thoughts like roses bloom And run with clouds across the vault of day. The west wind summons me beyond...