Love Returned

Love Returned

By Bayard Taylor

 

He was a boy when first we met;

     His eyes were mixed of dew and fire,

And on his candid brow was set

     The sweetness of a chaste desire:

But in his veins the pulses beat

     Of passion, waiting for its wing,

As ardent veins of summer heat

     Throb through the innocence of spring.

 

As manhood came, his stature grew,

     And fiercer burned his restless eyes,

Until I trembled, as he drew

     From wedded hearts their young disguise.

Like wind-fed flame his ardor rose,

     And brought, like flame, a stormy rain:

In tumult, sweeter than repose,

     He tossed the souls of joy and pain.

 

So many years of absence change!

     I knew him not when he returned:

His step was slow, his brow was strange,

     His quiet eye no longer burned.

When at my heart I heard his knock,

     No voice within his right confessed:

I could not venture to unlock

     Its chambers to an alien guest.

 

Then, at the threshold, spent and worn

     With fruitless travel, down he lay:

And I beheld the gleams of morn

     On his reviving beauty play.

I knelt, and kissed his holy lips,

     I washed his feet with pious care;

And from my life the long eclipse

     Drew off; and left his sunshine there.

 

He burns no more with youthful fire;

     He melts no more in foolish tears;

Serene and sweet, his eyes inspire

     The steady faith of balanced years.

His folded wings no longer thrill,

     But in some peaceful flight of prayer:

He nestles in my heart so still,

     I scarcely feel his presence there.

 

O Love, that stern probation o’er,

     Thy calmer blessing is secure!

Thy beauteous feet shall stray no more,

     Thy peace and patience shall endure!

The lightest wind deflowers the rose,

     The rainbow with the sun departs,

But thou art centred in repose,

     And rooted in my heart of hearts!

 

 

About the Poem

Bayard Taylor is not a household name today, but in the 19th century, he was known as a celebrated American poet, travel writer, and diplomat. A close contemporary of figures like Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Taylor’s work was steeped in romantic idealism, emotional intensity, and the mystique of distant lands. One of his lesser-known but deeply resonant poems, “Love Returned,” offers a quiet but powerful meditation on lost love.

At first glance, “Love Returned” seems to be about an emotionally bruised speaker reckoning with the unexpected return of a former beloved. The title suggests something joyful, even redemptive. And yet, the tone of the poem is anything but triumphant. Instead of welcoming love back with open arms, the speaker responds with hesitation, guardedness, and sorrow. There’s a clear sense that too much time has passed, too much pain has been endured. The love that once flourished now feels shadowed by distance and distrust.

Lines such as:

“Thou com’st too late, O love of mine…”

reveal the speaker’s reluctance to embrace this returning affection. We sense a deep internal struggle: the heart that once yearned is now tempered by hard-won wisdom and past wounds. Love may return, but the damage of its absence lingers. The emotional register here is raw and sincere, placing it squarely among the more moving poetic treatments of love’s ambivalence and timing.

In “Love Returned,” the use of abstract, universal terms like “Love,” “thou,” and “mine” allows readers of any gender or orientation to find themselves in the speaker’s position. But for LGBTQ readers—particularly those who have experienced the painful dynamics of love delayed, denied, or hidden—the emotional undercurrents may feel particularly resonant. The poem evokes that aching space between longing and fulfillment, a space many queer people have inhabited at some point in their lives.

Moreover, the speaker’s refusal to immediately accept the returning love is layered with meaning. It’s not just about betrayal or abandonment. It might also speak to the fear of being hurt again, of trusting love that once had to be hidden, or of reckoning with the societal forces that prevented it from being fully realized the first time. It is a deeply human moment, but also one that echoes the specific emotional terrain of queer lives lived in secrecy.


About the Poet

Bayard Taylor (1825–1878) was a prolific American poet, novelist, journalist, travel writer, and diplomat. Born in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, Taylor demonstrated a precocious talent for language and literature from a young age. He began publishing poetry in his teens and soon embarked on the first of many extensive journeys abroad—travels that would inspire a series of widely read books chronicling his experiences in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Taylor became a household name in mid-19th century America for his vivid travel writing and poetry, including the popular Views Afoot (1846) and Poems of the Orient (1854). He served as a diplomat in Russia and later as U.S. Minister to Prussia (now part of Germany), where he died in 1878 at the age of 53.

While Taylor married and led a respected public life, modern scholars have noted homoerotic undertones in much of his poetry and correspondence, suggesting that Taylor experienced same-sex attraction, particularly in his youth, but he lived in a time when open expressions of same-sex love were dangerous—legally, socially, and professionally. His early poems often feature idealized male figures and deep emotional bonds between men, framed in ways that were common among queer writers of the 19th century who had to navigate a society that criminalized or pathologized homosexuality. Like many queer writers of the 19th century, Taylor often employed gender-neutral language, making it possible for his expressions of love to be read in multiple ways. This ambiguity was not just a poetic device; it was a shield, allowing intimacy and affection to pass under the radar of a society that punished queer expression.

Taylor’s personal letters and early poetry hint at a rich and complex emotional world in which same-sex desire played a significant role. Though he later married and maintained a public heterosexual persona, he had deep emotional bonds with men—some of which appear to have crossed into romantic or erotic territory. Scholars have identified several of Taylor’s poems, including “To a Young Soldier” and several of his Eastern-themed verses, as part of a larger tradition of 19th-century queer poetics—works that expressed forbidden feelings through coded language, aesthetic distancing, and allegory.

Taylor’s relationships with male friends—intense, affectionate, and sometimes suggestively romantic—reflect a pattern familiar to LGBTQ+ historians: a life of coded expression, emotional sublimation, and poetic longing. While he did not (and likely could not) openly identify as queer in his time, Taylor’s body of work contains a rich undercurrent of queer sensibility, especially in poems like “Love Returned” and “To a Young Soldier.” Today, Bayard Taylor is recognized not only as a pioneering American literary voice but also as an important figure in early queer literary history, whose writings offer a window into the inner lives of men who loved other men in an era of silence.