Enjoy these quiet little love poems (mostly) written when I was younger. Don’t forget that “juvenilia” can be (as the word implies) juvenile (and not very good)!
—
O, my love, a little star
is blinking in the wild pass –
I would it were with me!
But, alack, the night is done
and you are gone away.
If I but had fairer face
I wonder, would it stay?
—
St. Valentine
It was the mid-afternoon
and, being distraught,
I stomached the evidence
of a compassionate soul
and gave myself
an uncomfortable gut
and the knowledge that
the mind inhabits a
cloistered brain
and hardly looks down
from its tower,
where it lives to think
and to sleep.
—
Good-night good-night
my paupered prince
may slumbers bring you rest –
I’ll speak ten thousand words today!
but these ones I mean best.
—
If I forget thy name, what of my heart?
The colder could not be the frost of wind
That shook the eaves and blew our souls apart;
And rue the day I have so idly sinned!
For scarcely can I think so fine
A name so sweetly sung as thine.
—
One solitary evening
Below the little stars
I stole across the flowers
That blossomed up in bars
All along the quiet lane –
The place we used to walk
Half-tired out by laughing hours,
Too merry then for talk!
How now, I gathered in my skirt
A munificent array
Of bluebells and cockleshells
And lilies of the day,
The sweetest man could e’er find
In Cities of No-Telling
Where all the speaking made a din
And peddlars did their selling.
Look how the moon was shining down,
That marvelled ball of light!
I ambled softly o’erground
Carrying flowers thru the night;
When soon I reached a craggy ledge
I thought upon thy face,
And sweetly stepped across the edge –
Good eve, my resting place!
—
My mem’ry is but naught to thee,
Who are so lonesome smiling –
My pocket-chief is filled with grief,
The flowers have all gone, flying –
—
A thousand or more are calling to flight
The will of thy hands, thy heart, and thy sight;
What chorus of hours is singing the while!
A flower grows mad inside of thy smile
And nary a soul shall silence his lips –
Would thou could stopper with firm fingertips!
The birth of the buzz inside of thy brain,
How often it plays, it plagues thee amain!
—
Beautiful flower, thou art the breath of my morning,
I cannot wake but for thee. – And if thou art gone flying,
I lengthen my dreams if only to ride
The petals thou droppest for me
The petals slow dropping for me!
—
I know the way to your heart:
Is it through a loaf of bread?
Or have all the other bakers
Gone and left you now for dead?
—
Don’t take your eyes off her.
Can’t you hear the saxophone singing?
Oh, my friend, I think
You’re about to fall in love.
—
I love thee, not faint, but quietly,
Inside my cupboard door;
I never speak but short to thee,
I would we loitered more!