Of Love And Hope

ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain-and back in rain.

I have out walked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet.

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right

I have been one acquainted with the night.

Robert Frost

LONGING

Come to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again!

For so the night will more than pay

The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,

A messenger from radiant climes,

And smile on the new world, and be

As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,

Come now, and let me dream it truth;

And part my hair, and kiss my brow,

And say: My love! why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again!

For so the night will more than pay

The hopeless longing of the day.

Matthew Arnold

SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies,

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meets in her aspect and her eyes,

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less

Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress

Or softly lightens o'er her face,

Where thoughts serenely sweet express

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek and o'er that brow

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,-

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent.

Lord Byron

LOVE SONG

How shall I hold my soul, that it may not

be touching yours? How shall I lift it then

above you to where other things are waiting?

Ah, gladly would I lodge it, all-forgot,

with some lost thing the dark is isolating

on some remote and silent spot that, when

your depths vibrate, is not itself vibrating.

You and me-all that lights upon us, though,

brings us together like a fiddle-bow

drawing one voice from two strings it glides along.

Across what instruments have we been spanned?

And what violinist holds us in his hand?

O sweetest song.

Ranier Maria Rilke

ARISE FROM THE DREAMS OF THEE

I arise from dreams of thee

In the first sweet sleep of night,

When the winds are breathing low,

And the stars are shining bright.

I arise from dreams of thee,

And a spirit in my feet

has led me-who knows how?-

To thy chamber-window, sweet!

The wandering airs they faint

On the dark, the silent stream,-

The champak odors fail

Like sweet thoughts in a dream,

The nightingale's complaint,

It dies upon her heart,

As I must die on thine,

O, beloved as thou art!

O, lift me from the grass!

I die, I faint, I fail!

Let thy love in kisses rain

On my lips and eyelids pale.

My cheek is cold and white, alas!

My heart beats loud and fast;

Oh! press it close to thine again,

Where it will break at last!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

SONNET #CXVI

Let me not to marriage of true minds

Admit impediments, Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

William Shakespeare

SONNET #XXIX

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself, and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,

Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hyms at heaven's gate;

For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

William Shakespeare

LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET

How should we be able to

forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of

all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last

moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons

of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see

us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything

terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that

wants help from us.

So you must not be frightened, if a sadness rises up

before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a

restiveness, like light and cloud-shadows, passes over

your hands and over all you do. You must think that

something is happening with you, that life has not

forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let

you fall...

Ranier Maria Rilke

YOU DARKNESS

You darkness, that I come from,

I love you more than all the fires

that fence in the world,

for the fire makes

a circle of light for everyone,

and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything:

shapes and fires, animals and myself,

how easily it gathers them!-

powers and people-

and it is possible a great energy

is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

Ranier Maria Rilke

COMPOSED ON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temple lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

William Wordsworth

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY

What through the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind;

In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;

In the soothing thoughts that spring

Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquished one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,

Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;

The innocent brightness of a new-born Day

Is lovely yet;

The Clouds that gather round the setting sun

Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

William Wordsworth

THE VOICE OF HER EYES SOMEWHERE

I HAVE NEVER TRAVELLED

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

any experience, your eyes have their silence;

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility: whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(I do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens; only something in me understands

though i have closed myself as fingers,

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

E.E. Cummings

"THE FIRST TIME I LOVED FOREVER"

The first time I loved forever

Was when you whispered my name

And I knew at once you loved me

For the me of who I am

The first time I loved forever

I cast all else aside

And I bid my heart to follow

Be there no more need to hide

And if wishes and dreams are merely for children

and if love's a tale for fools

I'll live the dream with you

For all my life and forever

There's a truth I'll always know

When my world divides and shatter

your love is where I'll go

Melanie

Legends by Helen Charlotte Hill

Click above link to see her site

THIS IS THE CREATURE

This is the creature there has never been.

They never knew it, and yet, none the less,

they loved the way it moved, its suppleness,

its neck, its very gaze, mild and serene.

Not there, because they loved it, it behaved

as though it were. They always left some space.

And in that clear unpeopled space they saved

it lightly reared its head, with scarce a trace

of not being there. They fed it, not with corn,

but only with the possibility

of being. And that was able to confer

such strength, its brow put forth a horn. One horn.

Whitely it stole up to a maid-to be

within the silver mirror and in her.

Ranier Maria Rilke

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