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Warning
by Jenny Joseph

WHEN I AM AN OLD WOMAN I SHALL WEAR PURPLE
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Life Goes On
Joyce Grenfell (1910-1979)

If I should go before the rest of you
Break not a flower
Nor inscribe a stone
Nor when I am gone
Speak in a Sunday voice
But be the usual selves That I have known

Weep if you must
Parting is hell
But life goes on
So .... sing as well

Ask the child why it is born; ask the flower why it blossoms, ask the sun why it shines. I love you because I must love you.
-– George Upton

Never did I believe there could be such utter happiness in this world, such a feeling of unity between two mortal beings. I love you, those three words have my life in them.
-– Alexandra to Nicholas II

… but my heart beats through my entire body and is conscious only of you. I belong to you; there is really no other way of expressing it, and that is not strong enough.
-– Franz Kafka to Felice Bauer

Ten thousand love birds, sweet-throated and red-plumed, were in my soul, in the garden of my under-life. There on ten thousand branches they slept as in night-time. You came and they awoke… a dawn burst on them – a long night was ended. God! How they sang… These birds want freedom… But I can let out only one at a time. Each letter, then is some joy till now jailed – but now sent flying – and flying and flying!
-– Carl Sandburg to Lilian Paula Steichen

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving
but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.
-– Pablo Neruda

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We are custodians, keepers of each other's hearts and secrets.
We treasure them with tenderness and fidelity.
There is always risk when one is dealing with priceless treasure.
But we... prefer to take that risk.
--Lionel A. Whiston

Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction of being loved for yourself, or, more correctly, being loved in spite of yourself.
--Victor Hugo

Be True Thyself

Thou must be true thyself,
If thou the truth wouldst teach;
Thy soul must overflow, if thou
Another soul wouldst reach!
It needs the overflow of heart
To give lips full speech.

Think truly, and thy thoughts
Shall the world's famine feed;
Speak truly, and each word of thine
Shall be a fruitful seed;
Live truly, and thy life shall be
A great and noble creed.
--Horatio Bonar

Oh, let the clouds grow dark above,
My heart is light below;
'Tis always summer when we love,
However winds may blow;
And I'm as proud as any prince,
All honors I disain:
She says I am her rain beau since
I kissed her in the rain.
--Samuel Minturn Peck

With a Flower

I hide myself within my flower,
That wearing on your breast.
You, unsuspecting, wear me too--
And angels know the rest.

I hide myself within my flower
That, fading from your vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me
Almost a lonliness.
--Emily Dickinson

At the Wedding March

God with honour hang your head,
Groom, and grace you, bride, your bed
With lissome beauty, sweet joy,
Out of hallowed bodies bred.

Each be other's comfort kind:
Deep, deeper, than divined,
Divine charity, dear charity,
Fast you ever, fast bind.

Then let the March tread our ears:
I to him turn with tears
Who to wedlock, his wonder wedlock,
Deals triumph and immortal years.
--Gerard Manly Hopkins

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you,
not knowing how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.
--Rumi

Apache Song

Now you will feel no rain,
for each of you will be a shelter to the other.

Now you will feel no cold,
for each of you will be warmth to the other.

Now there is no lonliness for you;
now there is no more lonliness.

Now you are two bodies,
but there is only one life before you.

Go now to your dwelling place,
to enter into your days together.

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

The Change

Each day my roses seem to grow more fair,
Their rainbow colors have a softer glow.
And skies at sunset have a radiance rare,
The nights a stillness I have learned to know.
In all these things I sense a subtle change,
The world about me is a sentient thing.
And beauty, which has been elusive, strange,
Has come to me; the whole world seems to sing.
The songbirds have a sweeter melody,
And all the world a brighter, lovlier grace.
And from it all new light has come to me,
I've found it in your dear, loved, smiling face.
Of course I dream; the world's the same I know;
But I, in loving you so much, I grow.
--Helen Parkinson Neal

I tasted thee, and now I hunger and thirst for thee.
Thou didst touch me and now I burn for thy peace.
--Saint Augustine

A Statue of Eros

Who carved love
and placed him by
this fountain,
thinking
he could control
such fire
with water?
--Zenodotos

1 Corinthians 13:1-4

Love is long-suffering and kind.
Love is not jealous, it does not brag,
does not get puffed up, does not behave indecently,
does not look for its own interests,
does not become provoked.
It soes not keep account of the injury.
It does not rejoice over unrighteousness,
but rejoices with the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails.

I loved you; even now I may confess,
Some embers of my love their fire retain;
But do not let it cause you more distress,
I do not want to sadden you again.
Hopeless and tongue-tied, yet I loved you dearly
With pangs the jealous and the timid know;
So tenderly I loved you, so sincerely,
I pray God grant another love you so.
--Alexander Pushkin

Not Even You

You asked me once when love was new
If aught could change my love for you.
I told you then that only one
Could change my love, yourself- dear one.

Now years have passed and tears have passed,
And faith is dead, but I at last
Have found, dear heart, not even you
Can change the love I bear for you.
--Helen Parkinson Neal

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf's a flower
But only so an hour
The leaf subsides to leaf
So Eden sank to grief
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
--Robert Frost

Somewhere ther waiteth in this world of ours,
For one lone soul, another lonely soul.
Each choosing through all the weary hours
And meeting strangely at one sudden goal.
Then they bend, like green leaves with golden flowers
Into one beautiful and perfect whole
And life's long night is ended,
And the way lies open onward to eternal day.
--Unknown

The Wounded Cupid Song

Cupid as he lay among
Roses, by a Bee was stung.
Whereupon in anger flying
To his Mother, said thus crying;
Help! O help! your Boy's a dying.
And why, my pretty Lad, said she?
Then blubbering, repliéd he,
A wingéd Snake has bitten me,
Which Country people call a Bee.
At which she smil'd;then with her hairs
And kisses drying up his tears:
Alas! said she, my Wag! if this
Such a pernicious torment is:
Come, tell me then, how great's the smart
Of thos thou woundest with they Dart!
--Anacreon

Symptoms of Love

Love is a universal migraine,
A bright stain on the vision
Blotting out reason.

Symptoms of true love
Are leaness, jealousy,
Laggard dawns;

Are omens of nightmares--
Listening for a knock,
Waiting for a sign:

For a touch of her fingers
In a darkened room,
For a searching look.

Take courage, lover!
Can you endure such grief
At any hand but hers?
--Robert Graves

Those who don't know fear will never know courage.
Those who don't know despair will never know hope.
Those who don't know utter aloneness will never know love's deepest fulfillment.
--Anonymous

Love Can Be So Small a Thing

Love can be so small a thing,
That death is preferable to life.
Love can be so great a thing,
That all the sorrow, all the strife
Are worth the while if, when it ends,
We know that life an love are friends.
--Helen Parkinson Neal

A Drinking Song

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in through the eye;
That's all we know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
--W.B. Yeats

Out of your whole life give but a moment.
All of your life that has gone before,
all to come after it.
So you ignore, so make perfect the present.
Condense, in a rapture of rage for perfection's endowment.
Thought, and feeling, and soul, and sense
Merged in a moment which gives me at last
You, around me for once
You, beneath me
You, above me
--Unknown

To Celia

Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup
And I'll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove's nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.
I sent the late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honoring thee
As giving it a hope that there
It could not withered be;
But thou therein didst only breathe,
And sent'st it back to me;
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not but thee!
--Ben Jonson

A Dedication to My Wife

To whom I owe the leaping delight
That quickens my senses in our waking time
And the rythm that governs the repose of our sleeping time,
The breathing in unison

Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other
Who think the same thoughts without need of speech
And babble the speech without need of meaning.
No peevish winter wind shall chill
No sullen tropic sun shall wither
The roses in the rose garden which is ours and ours only

But this dedication is for others to read:
These are private words addressed to you in public.
--T.S. Eliot

Methinks if I should kiss thee, no control
Within the thrilling brain would keep afloat,
The subtle spirit. Even while I spoke,
The bare word 'kiss' hath made my inner soul
To tremble like a lutestring, 'ere the note
Has melted in the silence that it broke.
--Alfred Lord Tennyson

An Arguement

I've oft been told by learned friars,
That wishing and the crime are one,
And Heaven punishes desires
As much as if the deed were done.
If wishing damns us, you and I
Are damned to all our hearts content;
Come then, at least we may enjoy
Some pleasure for our punishment!
--Thomas Moore

No matter how far you travel or how much you will see,
never will there be a sunset with the colors in her hair,
never will the stars come close to the light in her eyes,
never will the warm summer breeze bring greater joy than that of her smile.
--Sebastien Larocque

"It warms me, it charms me to mention her name;
It heats me, it beats me and sets me on flame."
--Robert Burns

There's a moment when I look at you
And no speech is left in me
My tongue breaks
Then fire races under my skin and I tremble
And I grow pale for I am dying of such love
Or so it seems to me
--Sappho

Love is the devine vitality that everywhere produces and restores life.
To each and every one of us, it gives the power of working miracles if we will.
--Lydia Maria Child

Love alone is capable of uniting human beings in such a way as to complete and fulfil them,
For it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves.
--Pierre Tielhard de Chardin

For one human being to love another human being:
that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us,
the ultimate task, the final test and proof,
the work for which al other work is merely preparation.
--Rainer Maria Rilke

Intimacy... the mystical bond of friendship, commitment, and understanding.
--James Dobson

When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world -no matter how imperfect- becomes rich and beautiful, for it consists solely of opportunities for love.
--Soren Kierkegaard

The more I wonder, the more I love.
--Alice Walker

Nothing compares with being in love.
--Oprah Winfrey

There is a net of love by which you can catch souls.
--Mother Teresa

Love builds for eternity.
--Mary McLeod Bethune

Go ahead... be happy as long as you can.
--Dorothy Parker

Give all to love; Obey thy heart.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love and the gentle heart are but a single thing.
--Dante Alighieri

Oh Love as long as you can love.
--Ferdinand Freiligrath

Love is merely a madnes...
--Shakespeare

How vast a memory has Love.
--Alexander Pope

When love is good it can make you fly.
--George Davis

Where love is concerned, too much is not even enough.
--P.A.C. de Beaumarchais

Love conquers all things...
--Virgil

Love me sweet
With all thou art
Feeling, thinking, seeing;
Love me in the
Lightest part,
Love me in full
Being.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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