Louise Labe Poems

Long-felt desires, hopes as long as vain--
sad sighs--slow tears accustomed to run sad
into as many rivers as two eyes could add,
...

I flee the city, temples, and each place
where you took pleasure in your own lament,
where you used every forceful argument
...

While yet these tears have power to flow
For hours for ever past away;
While yet these swelling sighs allow
My faltering voice to breathe a lay;
...

While I have tears that start into my eyes,
At memories of joys that we have known
And while my voice, still master of its own,
Is not yet choked with sobbing and with sighs.
...

All love is seen to fade and pass away.
When soul blends body by most subtle art,
I am the body, you the better part.
But O my well-loved soul, why did you stray ?
...

Kiss me, kiss me again and kiss me more;
Give me one of your most tastiest,
Give me one of your most sexiest
And I'll give hot kisses, more than four.
...

What if the hero of the Odyssey
Had been like you, a man that's fair of face ?
Would he have had that easy-mannered grace,
Yet be the cause of so much agony ?
...

I live, I burn, I drown and I die
I endure at once chill and cold;
Life is too hard and too soft to hold;
I am joyful and sad, don't ask me why.
...

What good is it to me that once you praised
The golden splendour of my plaited hair,
Or that to two bright Suns you would compare
The beauty of my eyes, from which Love gazed
...

O gentle gaze, o eyes where beauty grows,
Like little gardens full of amorous flowers,
Where the bow of Love shoots his sharp arrows
And where my eyes have gazed for many hours.
...