More Poetry

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY

The fountains mingle with the river,

And the rivers with the ocean;

The winds of heaven mix forever,

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine

In one another's being mingle:-

Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven,

And the waves clasp one another;

No sister flower would be forgiven

If it disdained its brother;

And the sunlight clasps the earth,

And the moonbeams kiss the sea:-

What are all these kissings worth,

If thou kiss not me?

Percy Bysshe Shelley

THE YEARS

To-night I close my eyes and see

A strange procession passing me-

The years before I saw your face

Go by me with a wisful grace;

They pass, the sensitive shy years,

As one who strives to dance, half blind with tears.

The years went by and never knew

That each one brought me nearer you;

Their path was narrow and apart

And yet it led me to your heart-

Oh sensitive shy years, oh lonely years,

That strove to sing with voices drowned in tears.

Sara Teasdale

A WHITE ROSE

The red rose whispers of passion,

And the white rose breathes of love;

Oh, the red rose is a falcon,

And the white rose is a dove.

But I send you a cream-white rosebud,

With a flush on its petal tips;

For the love that is purest and sweetest

Has a kiss of desire on the lips.

John Boyle O'Reilly

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow-

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream:

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand-

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep-While I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

Edgar Allan Poe

bookcover art by Kevin Barns

THE OPEN WINDOW

My tower was grimly builded,

With many a bolt and bar,

"And here," I thought, "I will keep my life

from the bitter world afar."

Dark and chill was the stony floor,

Where never a sunbeam lay,

And the mould crept up on the dreary wall,

With its ghost touch, day by day.

One morn, in my sullen musings,

A flutter and cry I heard

And close at the rusty casement

There clung a frightened bird.

Then back I flung the shutter

That was never before undone,

And I kept till its wings were rested

The little weary one.

But through the open window,

Which I had forgot to close,

There had burst a gush of sunshine

And a summer scent of rose.

For all the while I had burrowed

There in my dingy tower,

Lo! the birds had sung and the leaves had dance

From hour to sunny hour.

And such balm and warmth and beauty

Came drifting in since then,

That window still stands open

And shall never be shut again.

Edward Rowland Sill

Moon by Sonia Corral

Click onto the above link to visit her site.

A SONNET OF THE MOON

Look how the pale queen of the silent night

Doth cause the ocean to attend upon her,

And he, as long as she is in his sight,

With her full tide is ready her to honor.

But when the silver waggon of the moon

Is mounted up so high he cannot follow,

The sea calls home his crystal waves to moan,

And with low ebb doth manifest his sorrow.

So you that are the sovereign of my heart

Have all my joys attending on your will;

My joy low-ebbing when you do depart,

When you return their tide my heart doth fill.

So as you come and as you do depart,

Joys ebb and flow withing my tender heart.

Charles Best

THE THOUGHT OF HER

My love for thee doth take me unaware,

When most with lesser things my brain is wrought,

As in some nimble interchange of thought

The silence enters, and the talkers stare.

Suddenly I am still and thou art there,

A viewless visitant and unbesought,

And all my thinking trembles into nought

And all my being opens like a prayer.

Thou art the lifted Chalice in my soul,

And I a dim church at the thought of thee;

Brief be the moment, but the mass is said,

The benediction like a aureole

Is on my spirit, and shuddering through me

A rapture like the rapture of the dead.

Richard Hovey

LOVE'S SPRINGTIDE

My heart was winter-bound until

I heard you sing;

O voice of Love, hush not, but fill

My life with Spring!

My hopes were homeless things before

I saw your eyes;

O smile of Love close not the door

To paradise!

My dreams were bitter once, and then

I found them bliss;

O lips of Love, give me again

your rose to kiss!

Springtide of Love! The secret sweet

Is ours alone;

O heart of Love, at last you beat

Against my own!

Frank Dempster Sherman

THE FAIR SINGER

To make a final conquest of all me,

Love did compose so sweet an enemy,

In whom both beauties to my death agree,

Joining themselves in fatal harmony;

That while she with her eyes my heart does bind,

She with her voice might capitavate my mind,

I could have fled from one but singly fair,

My disentangled soul itself might save,

Breaking the curled trammels of her hair.

But how should I avoid to be her slave,

Whose subtle art invisibly can wreath

My fetter of the very air I breathe?

It had been easy fighting in some plain,

Where victory might hang in equal choice,

But all resistance against her is vain,

Who has th'advantage both of eyes and voice,

And all my forces needs must be undone,

She having gained both the wind and sun.

Andrew Marvell

SUDDEN LIGHT

I have been here before,

But when or how I cannot tell:

I know the grass beyond the door,

The sweet keen smell,

The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,-

How long ago I may not know:

But just when at that swallow's soar

Your neck turn'd so,

Some veil did fall,-I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before?

And shall not thus time's eddying flight

Still with our lives our love restore

In death's despite,

And day and night yield one delight once more?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Bookcover art by Jim Warren

THE DEFINITION OF LOVE

My love is of a birth as rare

As 'tis for object strange and high;

It was begotten by Despair

Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone

Could show me so divine a thing

Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown,

But vainly flapp'd its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive

Where my extended soul is fixt,

But Fate does iron wedges drive,

And always crowds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eye does see

Two perfect loves, nor let them close;

Their union would her ruin be,

And her tyrannic pow'r depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel

Us as the distant poles have plac'd,

(Though love's whole world on us doth wheel)

Not by themselves to be embrac'd;

Unless the giddy heaven fall,

And earth some new convulsion tear;

And, us to join, the world should all

Be cramp'd into a planisphere.

As lines, so loves oblique may well

Themselves in every angle greet;

But ours so truly parallel,

Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,

But Fate so enviously debars,

Is the conjunction of the mind,

And Opposition of the stars.

Andrew Marvell

ABSENT YET PRESENT

As the flight of a river

That flows to the sea

My soul rushes ever

In tumult to thee

A twofold existence

I am where thou art:

My heart in the distance

Beats close to thy heart.

Look up, I am near thee,

I gaze on thy face:

I see thee, I hear thee,

I feel thine embrace.

As the magnet's control on

The steel it draws to it,

Is the charm of thy soul on

The thoughts that pursue it.

And absence but brightens

The eyes that I miss,

And custom but heightens

The spell of thy kiss.

It is not from duty,

Though that may be owed,-

It is not from beauty,

Though that be bestowed:

But all that I care for,

And all that I know,

Is that, without wherefore,

I worship thee so.

Through granite it breaketh

A tree to the ray:

As a dreamer forsaketh

The grief of the day,

My soul in its fever

Escapes unto thee:

O dream to the griever!

O light to the tree!

A twofold existence

I am where thou art:

Hark, hear in the distance

The beat of my heart!

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

I LIVED WITH VISIONS

I lived with visions for my company,

Instead of men and women, years ago,

And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know

A sweeter music than they played to me.

But soon their trailing purple was not free

Of this world's dust,-their lutes did silent grow,

And I myself grew faint and blind below

Their vanishing eyes. Then Thou didst come...

to be,

Beloved, what they seemed. Their shining fronts,

Their songs, their splendours, (better, yet the same,

as river-water hallowed into fonts)

Met in thee, and from out thee overcame

My soul with satisfaction of all wants-

Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Seacape by Sonia Corral

MEETING AT NIGHT

The grey sea and the long black land;

And the yellow half-moon large and low;

And the startled little waves that leap

In fiery ringlets from their sleep,

As I gain the cove with pushing prow,

And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;

Three fields to cross till a farm appears;

A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch

And blue spurt of a lighted match,

And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,

Than the two hearts beating each to each!

Robert Browning

MY STAR

All that I know

Of a certain star,

Is, it can throw

(Like the angled spar)

Now a dart of red,

Now a dart of blue,

Till my friends have said

They would fain see, too,

My star that dartles the red and the blue!

Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled:

They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.

What matter to me if their star is a world?

Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

Robert Browning

Painting by Olivia De Berandinis

DESIRE

Where true Love burns Desire is Love's pure flame;

It is the reflex of our earthly frame,

That takes it meaning from the nobler part,

And but translates the language of the heart.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

WEDDING PRAYER

Now you will feel no rain,

For each of you will be shelter to the other.

Now you will feel no cold,

For each of you will be warmth to the other.

Now there is no more loneliness,

For each of you will be companion to the other.

Now you are two bodies,

But there is only one life before you.

Go now to your dewelling place

To enter into the days of your togetherness

And may your days be good and long upon the earth.

Traditional Apache Prayer

BEAUTY THAT IS NEVER OLD

When buffeted and beaten by life's storms

When by the bitter cares of life oppressed,

I want no surer haven than your arms,

I want no sweeter heaven than your breast.

When over my life's way there falls the blight

Of sunless days, and nights of starless skies;

Enough for me, the calm and steadfast light

That softly shines within your loving eyes.

The world, for me, and all the world can hold

Is circled by your arms; for me there lies,

Within the lights and shadows of your eyes,

The only beauty that is never old.

James Weldon Johnson

SHALL I COMPARE THEE

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May;

And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimme'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare

bookcover art by Kevin Barnes

FROM "THE PROPHET"

When love beckons to you, follow him,

Though his ways are hard and steep.

And when his wings enfold you yield to him,

Though the sword hidden among his pinions

may wound you.

And when he speaks to you believe in him,

Though his voice may shatter your dreams as

the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify

you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for

your pruning.

Even as he ascends to your height and

caresses your tendrest branches that quiver

in the sun,

So shall he descend to your roots and shake

them in their clinging to the earth...

...if in your fear you would seek only love's

peace and love's pleasure,

Then it is better for you that you cover your

nakedness and pass out of love's

threshing-floor,

Into the seasonless world where you shall

laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep,

but not all of your tears.

Kahlil Gibran

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