Love Sonnet XLIV
Love is the sepulchre of all my sin,
If it be sin to let the body sink
In that slow dying the sick senses drink
That ne’er have felt true Love’s delight rush in.
Hot Vice may sear the bloom of Beauty’s skin
Polluting Virtue with a painted wink,
But Love smiles lightly at such guilt, I think,
And cures corruption e’er her ills begin.
I cannot tell the wonder of desire
That flames my cheek when you are by my side.
Nor dare I speak the secret of that bliss
That sets the senses of my soul on fire.
Ah Love! all my sin vanished into pride
When I drank Heaven from your first pure kiss.
poem by Zora Bernice May Cross
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Sonnet Of Motherhood XXXI
Beloved, I who shall be mother soon
Need mothering myself this tired hour,
As heavily the sweet and precious power
Weighs on my heart till I am near to swoon.
Console me, soothe me, Dearest, with the boon
Of your firm strength, and little comforts shower
Soft on the drifting doubtings that devour
Patience and courage when the death-winds croon.
You are your mother, Dear, as I am mine.
And, as we slumber to our souls’ caress,
Those two who panged for us and weeping smiled,
Draw near and bind us in a peace divine.
O mother me; all else is comfortless
As painted lips above a dying child.
poem by Zora Bernice May Cross
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Love Sonnet XLIX
In me there is a vast and lonely place,
Where none, not even you, have walked in sight.
A wide, still vale of solitude and light,
Where Silence echoes into ebbing space.
And there I creep at times and hide my face,
While in myself I fathom wrong and right,
And all the timeless ages of the night
That sacred silence of my soul I pace.
And when from there I come to you, love-swift,
My mouth hot-edged with kisses fresh as wine,
Often I find your longings all asleep
And unresponsive from my grasp you drift.
Ah, Love, you, too, seek solitude like mine,
And soul from soul the secret seems to keep.
poem by Zora Bernice May Cross
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Love Sonnet XVII
Beloved, lest I should remember, I
Must swift forget the wonder of last night.
Hot memory would but blacken out my sight
And dull my senses till they seemed to die.
How could I live, remembering that sigh…
That breath…that sob…that all sublime delight?
Eternal joy is death, I think, and might
Not such sweet madness kill me, coming nigh?
I died with you that hour. Or, if not, merged
Myself in you, commingling all my life
Within your own, until I fled and fled
Into your blood; and my pure pulses surged,
Heaped with the wedded bliss of man and wife…
Dying, I lived…and living, I was dead.
poem by Zora Bernice May Cross
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Sonnet Of Motherhood XLV
Dearest, your mother feels (though dead) this birth—
Laughs at the fire within your shining eyes—
Your eyes, yet mine, wherein such glory lies
Never before beheld upon the earth.
She scents the fragrance of the lily-mirth
Lilting this body that I drew all-wise
Out of your own, so hers, and with low sighs,
Mellowed in mine to what a wondrous worth.
Kiss me. Kiss her. The miracle is wrought—
The simple beauty out of simple love—
Mother and father, child and God—all One—
Eternal trinity for ever sought.
O, blessed from her quiet place above,
Your mother kisses us—a life’s work done.
poem by Zora Bernice May Cross
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Love Sonnet X
And then came Science with her torch red-lit
And cosmic marvels round her glowing head—
The primal cell, the worm, the quadruped—
Striving to make each to the other fit.
Tongue-trumpeting her own unchallenged wit,
She offered me the woof of Wisdom’s thread,
And Truth and Purity that hourly tread
The paths where sages in their wonder sit.
And still I smiled and kissed you with a sob.
My lips on yours, I heard, high up above
Love’s feet ring laughter on the starry sod
And felt the echo through our bosoms throb.
Beloved, Science ends in our pure love
Which shares alone the secrets of our God.
poem by Zora Bernice May Cross
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Sonnet Of Motherhood VI
I’d have you love my body as my soul,
Praise it and magnify it night and day,
Knowing its sweetness blossoms out of clay
With tremulous movement to its spirit goal.
These arms perchance have clambered branch and bole,
These feet have run from many beasts of prey;
But Love has led them to a clearer way.
Moulding white rapture from apparent dole.
O, let my body be your soul’s delight,
Your mirror true of Beauty most-esteemed,
That looking on its form your lips breathe low:
“This is herself, her soul within my sight.”
So read it over as a book you dreamed
In boyhood’s fancy many a year ago.
poem by Zora Bernice May Cross
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Love Sonnet XV
Love, you have brought to me my perfect soul,
More sweet than earthly things, more precious rare,
Hiding its fragrance in my loosened hair
And folding up my body like a scroll.
O, lie with me all night, and let the roll
Of Rapture’s waves wash over us, as, bare
Of anything save Love, we haply share
The joys of our first parents’ chaste control.
My Love, my piece of Heaven God has spilled
Upon my outstretched hands, O, kiss me yet.
Here, lying close to you, I feel—I know,
My being, even now, is charged and filled
With light and bliss it never will forget
Though aeons over my cold corpse should flow.
poem by Zora Bernice May Cross
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Love Sonnet LIV
What have you more than I, who crave you so?
Have I not hands and feet and thoughts to tell?
All my sweet senses and fine dreams that swell
Rich with contentments that the star-winds blow?
Yet do I need you everywhere I go,
As if you held me in some stinging spell;
And nothing living but yourself could quell
The conscious longings that tumultuous flow.
I am myself; and yet I cannot move
Hand, foot or eye but I am drawn to you.
I want you all—dreams, kisses, thoughts and eyes.
Dearest, it seems, my very wants would prove
I am yourself, dreaming we measure two;
And lack myself, that which yourself supplies.
poem by Zora Bernice May Cross
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Sonnet Of Motherhood XL
A miracle of miracles is here.
Take off your shoes. This place is holy ground.
No man-child ours like that the shepherd found
By dreaming Mary when the Star burned clear.
Our God has given us a woman, dear,
390ഊWith satin skin her dimpling shoulders round.
No pinkest shell with sea-blown bubbles crowned
Could match the marvel of her tiny ear.
How like to me, and yet ’tis you—all you.
I dare not touch her. Take your soul, My Own.
Set in my body with your mind, your sight,
Your dreams and thoughts with every promise true—
A queen to sit upon a regal throne
With a man’s soul won out of woman’s right.
poem by Zora Bernice May Cross
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!