First Love

First Love

I ne'er was struck before that hour
With love so sudden and so sweet,
Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower
And stole my heart away complete.

My face turned pale as deadly pale,
My legs refused to walk away,
And when she looked "what could I ail?"
My life and all seemed turned to clay.

And then my blood rushed to my face
And took my sight away.
The trees and bushes round the place
Seemed midnight at noonday.

I could not see a single thing,
Words from my eyes did start;
They spoke as chords do from the string
And blood burnt round my heart.

Are flowers the winter's choice?
Is love's bed always snow?
She seemed to hear my silent voice
And love's appeal to know.

I never saw so sweet a face
As that I stood before:
My heart has left its dwelling-place
And can return no more.

-John Clare (1793-1864)

I Loved You First - Christina Rossetti

I loved you first: but afterwards your love
Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
Which owes the other most? my love was long,
And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;
I loved and guessed at you, you construed me
And loved me for what might or might not be –
Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’
With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done,
For one is both and both are one in love:
Rich love knows nought of ‘thine that is not mine;’
Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.

-Christina Rossetti

Sonnet 8

I live, I Die. I drown and I burn.
I shiver with cold and perish with heat.
I leap from anguish to delight; from sweet
To bitter. No two moments are the same.

Suddenly my laughter and my cries
Join in a single instant, each pleasure
Aches with a hidden torment, and the night
Fades, yet endures. I wither and I bloom.

So Love leads me on forever.
And when I think I know the limits of pain
Without knowing, I find myself at peace.

When I think my joy is lasting and I see
Some future hope, some present certainty,
He returns and brings back the past again.

-Louise Labé (1525-1565): Sonnet 8
(transl. Richard A. Branyon)

Matthew Arnold Quote - Love, let us be true to one another

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

-Matthew Arnold: from Dover Beach (1867)

Love Quotes Romantic - Love and Friendship - Emily Brontë

Love is like the wild rose-briar;
Friendship like the holly-tree.
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms,
But which will bloom most constantly?

The wild-rose briar is sweet in the spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again
And who will call the wild-briar fair?

Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now
And deck thee with the holly's sheen,
That when December blights thy brow
He may still leave thy garland green.

-Emily Brontë