Sonnets To My Love Poem by Samuel Alfred Beadle

I stood, when life was full of buoyant hope,
At sunrise, in the vanished years now flown,
With my mother, on that piece of earth that's known
To those who've had mother's affections ope
The gate, and leave ajar, to their full scope,
The delightful ways of sweet childhood's home,
And felt her hand of blessing on her own -
And now when fancy calls up those remote
Times, though its far too late, I appreciate
Her sole absorbing theme, maternal love;
Alone on this, the greatest human trait,
God has written in the archives above
Divine; but she left me disconsolate,
Alone in oblivion's sphere to move.


I turn away from this scene of sadness,
To embrace thee, fairest of all the earth,
Thou thrillest me and all my friends with mirth
And incitest hope that counsels cheerfulness,
And bidst me to no longer doubt; nor guess
At the supremacy of thyself and worth,
Nor longer to compare thee with the serf;
Life's meaner beings and their littleness.
Thou art celestial, fair sweetheart of mine,
Divinely fashioned in thine every part,
The light that dazzles in those eyes of thine,
Has won until now my unconquered heart;
I kneel, divested of self, at love's shrine
And offer thee all my confiding heart.


It is thine for good, for better, or for worse,
Faithful to remain through all the year
Of checkered life's bright sunshine, cloud and tear,
Thine whatever be thy sad reverse,
Thine till the collapse of the universe;
Thine to revere, to love, adore, to wear
Thine image on my soul; nor fate, nor fear,
Weal nor woe, nor Mammon's power coerce
Me into cold forgetfulness of thee,
Because thou still livest alone for me
And stern, cold, destructive adversity,
Has left thee goddess of prosperity,
To inspire me. Today, o'er life's grim sea,
I hear the glad acclaim of victory.


It's sweet to hear the milkmaid's rural song
Floating in its melody on the wind;
The buoyant echo of a tranquil mind;
And sweeter still to see the waving corn,
Falling beneath the scythe throughout the long
Harvest days; and yet still more so to find
The frugal meal spread by the angel kind,
Which God gave to be our helpmate. The horn
Of plenty thrives in her delicate hand,
And economy fills our humble board.
It is sweet as you tread a foreign strand,
Where the ships from over the sea stand moored;
To learn anew that in your native land,
Confiding lovers your memories hoard.


It is sweet to have narrated at night
The travels of him who has seen the earth,
When hoary winter makes of all a dearth,
And the fires of peace in our homes burn bright
As we mix our wines and our friendships plight,
O'er the bright nectar that kindles the mirth,
Of the jolly souls that surround our hearth
With their witty convivial delight.
But sweeter, sweeter far, than all of these,
Are the delicious joys young lovers steal,
While making love beneath the verdant trees,
As they feel the full, wild, passionate weal
Of first love's grand emotions; when the breeze
Of mutual hope fans the fire they feel.


But this to me is the sweetest by night,
With my love's soft voice as the complement,
Chiming the cadence of its merriment,
While her heart's at ease, and her spirit bright,
Allures the soul in its ecstatic flight,
To the fullest extent of its sentient,
Passionately, bewildered sentiment,
Of love's profound, affectionate delight.
To feel the touch of this angelic one,
In the sublime grace of her fellowship;
Makes the heart beat quick and the spirit run,
Pregnant with great bliss, into Cupid's ship
O'er oceans of doubt, to love's dominion,
As on her upturned face I press my lip.


And when under the weight of cares for me,
In affection's bower thou seekst repose,
I will gather the myrtle, lilly and rose,
To embellish thy resting place for thee.
For chastity's reclining couch should be
A sacred shrine, where the gallant daily goes,
A self-made vassal, chief of love's heroes
Felling the vicious tongue of calumny.
When all the means at my command are spent,
Whereof I might make thy sleep softly flow
Through sunny dreams, I'll cease to serve, and print
A kiss, love's epilogue, on thy sweet brow,
Explanatory of our merriment,
And resign thee to slumbers light and low.


Again the long and sombre shadows throw
Their spectre forms across the dreary road;
And their grim quiverings plainly forebode
A crisis, and the golden sun, although
Fading, has still a rich and brilliant glow,
And his brow of burnished gold throws a robe
Of crimson o'er all; as the grim old ford
Between the night and the day he leaps o'er.
When tired day slowly succumbs to twilight,
Whose silent curtain, dropping, hides the way
From view, and we see cold, dark, gloomy night
In triumph succeed the beautiful day,
Until the moon and stars, illumed and bright,
Have martialed themselves in the Milky Way.


Now the beauties of the sun's after glow
Are reflected in yon dazzling arcade,
As legions of stars after stars promenade
Down the aisles of the firmament, and throw
The glory of their unique order o'er
All; there each in its special orbit stayed,
By the rules of harmony which pervade
The universe, has beings of its own,
Who looking off on this world of ours, call
It, perchance, a star, as on in its way
It goes around the Prince of day, a ball
Of ordinate matter, till ev'ry ray
Of the spheres roll in files astronomical,
While in the east the laughing sunbeams play.


Sleep, thou art a workman of skill and art,
The master builder that turneth the arch
Of beauty in feminine form; monarch
Of nature's stupendous being and heart,
That fills creation to its utmost part,
With energy for its triumphant march,
O'er the blighting forces of death that parch
The soul of beauty; aye, the stricken heart
Beats stronger after calm repose with thee,
And death is foiled in its triumphant hour,
And marks but a point in our destiny,
Where the watch fires burn dimly in life's tower
But will blaze with renewed vitality,
Reignited by thy silent power.


For what is death but calm repose after all?
Sleep, lovely sleep, that finds vitality;
Behold! it springs from seed of plant and tree,
A living fact, the grave cannot enthrall,
Nor annihilation again recall -
Demonstrated resurrection to me,
Immortal life, man's final destiny;
By nature's vital forces ever called
To action somewhere in the universe,
After the pause for refreshment and rest,
In that realm where the omnivorous nurse
Men call the grave, enfolds all to its breast,
Whose stern immutable powers coerce
And all the living maketh a jest.


Blessed is the man who enters sleep's domain
Of tranquility and majestic ease;
Where refreshing slumbers the weak appease,
And with beauty reanimate the inane;
Where calumny's shaft and intended pain
Are vanished never to return again;
Where society's distinctions release
Their hold, and caste - that civil disease -
Which has destroyed states and wrecked empires,
Is perpetually barred; there the old
Consuming blight of poverty expires,
And of mute inactivity grows cold;
When peaceful repose quiets the desires,
And sleep, majestic sleep, fills the household.


Come thou, lord of labor, come. I propose
To ally myself with thee, and to have,
Thy powerful hands close these eyes, and pave
My way to forgetfulness and repose;
Teach me how soon forgot are all the woes,
The joys, the triumphs; and all that men crave
Or hope for, love or abhor, when the grave,
Ante room to eternity, shall close
All the realities of earth to me.
Sweet refreshing slumber, come, my royal
Master, come thou, and let me embrace thee.
Oh! come thou, and strengthen me for the toil
Of another day; and of eternity
Give me a view, ere my ashes have turned to soil.


Sweet the morning after repose with thee,
When the firmament turns from gray to gold
And the radiant starlit sky has rolled
Into the archives of day's immensity,
And thou awake, seeming fresh from Deity's
Hands come, and we from love's eyes will behold
The first born of all the spheres arise, bold
And fearless in his supreme sovereignty
O'er all aerial things; but to you,
Last and fairest from the hand of God,
He comes on golden wings, a servant true,
Alone illuminating thy abode;
There he is at last up the eastern view,
And only for thee creation's beauties hoard.


Sweep on in thine aerial flight, O sun,
Like shadows old chaos fled before thee,
When thou swung out there over land and sea,
The hub of the solar system to run
The universe; then the morning stars sung
Together while thou set the spheres aglee,
And fixed the measures of their destiny
When old time's calendar began to run.
But who can fix the measure of thy years,
Or tell when they shall end, as they surely will,
For 'tis said thyself shall die, and the spheres
Shall forget their concord and instill
In old chaos a new hope; but it appears
It shall not triumph when thou art still.


Then Jehovah's supremest attribute
Will light the diamond boulevards of the sky,
And angels of peace and light will fly,
On errands of love for thee, and salute
Us with shouts of welcome, which will confute
The fears our carnal bodies raised, led by
The prince of night; that father of the lie
Which once made us hesitate, and commute
The priceless favor of Messiah for him.
But now we see His love in the pathless wood,
In rippling stream, and eolian hymn,
In the embellished lea where Flora stood
And sowed the flowers in the early spring,
And left the spirit of her sisterhood.


Who is the queen of my fancy? Well,
My friend would you really like to know?
She is not yellow, white nor gray, and so
Must be something else. I'm afraid to tell,
Since all that's mean between heaven and hell,
Abhor the color black. She's cherub, though,
And all the fair and the impartial know,
She is a beautiful, beautiful angel.
I care not what your prejudice, you'll love
Her in your heart, when the light of her dark eyes
Beam on you, like the flash of stars above
A dark and rolling cloud; her form complies
With all the art the Grecian sculptors prove;
'Her voice?' A chord escaped from paradise.