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Dear Members,
Really,amazing! I thought I had contributed here.Anyway it was pleasure again to read all over again.I am glad so many read with so much variety.So here is my contribution.
By Florence Earle Coates
IF love were but a little thing—
Strange love, which, more than all, is great—
One might not such devotion bring,
Early to serve and late.
If love were but a passing breath— 5
Wild love—which, as God knows, is sweet—
One might not make of life and death
A pillow for love’s feet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vango
Cruised back four years (page 6) for this reference.
Dover Beach, by Mathew Arnold, is not only my favorite poem, but a great love poem.
The Industrial Revolution was on, and yet years before Charles Darwin sailed on the Beagle naturalists had noted that the incessant waves had eroded the face of the "White Cliffs of Dover" revealing 10,000 years of limestone. Upon examination the shellfish fossils that made up the lime had changed very little in that time.
Therefore, the world was a lot older than the 6,000 years interpreters of the Bible said.
"Tain't so!" - What the Bible said, was the conclusion. Thus England entered the "Post Christian" phase.
Poetry changed.
Arnold in "Dover Beach," cuts to the heart of the matter: if heretofore life's "meaning" had crashed like a dove on Dover beach, what would replace it?
Dover Beach
by Mathew Arnold
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair.
Upon the straights;-on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where sea meets the moon-blanched sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then begin again,
With tremendous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the AEgaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its meloncholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wild, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain,
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
-1848
It seems like a vision poem like The Seine Net, by Robinson Jeffers. But that vision is not addressed to a loved one, nor is it about the conclusion that only love has meaning now.
In any event it gets my vote for greatest love poem (with the background info anyway).
Or at least I tend to agree with Arnold's viewpoint: If; then...
And why do we neglect Donne?
THE CANONIZATION.
by John Donne
FOR God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love ;
Or chide my palsy, or my gout ;
My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout ;
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve ;
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his Honour, or his Grace ;
Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face
Contemplate ; what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.
Alas ! alas ! who's injured by my love?
What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd?
Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.
Call's what you will, we are made such by love ;
Call her one, me another fly,
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find th' eagle and the dove.
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us ; we two being one, are it ;
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.
We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tomb or hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse ;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms ;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for love ;
And thus invoke us, "You, whom reverend love
Made one another's hermitage ;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage ;
Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes ;
So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize—
Countries, towns, courts beg from above
A pattern of your love."
As it is late for me, I will return to say something about Donne and his illumination on love tomorrow, possibly.
My name will be up in your list one day. I'll do whatever it takes to be as famous as Bob Dylan or Shakespeare.
For someone who can sometimes scoff at great poets with impatience, I am seemingly most lenient when it comes to continued appreciation of Donne; he is my favorite Elizabethan, and The Canonization is one of my favorite poems, and the verses I single out here is what elevates the piece to metaphysical mastery.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jozanny
Jacobean, not Elizabethan.
For a quibble, my friend, that is a stretch. Kermode counts him among the Elizabethan, but with a little quell-time, perhaps, I can offer a little more analysis. Not this morning tho.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
I love Cummings love poems. Hard to beat them.
Cat
The Ecstacy, John Donne
Here is my favorite love poem , which is by Lord Byron
When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.
The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow-
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.
They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me-
Why were thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:-
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.
In secret we met-
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?-
With silence and tears.
I could not agree more.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cat_Brenners
My favorite love poem... by A. Pushkin (of course, it is only translation)
To ***
The wondrous moment of our meeting...
I well remember you appear
Before me like a vision fleeting,
A beauty's angel pure and clear.
In hopeless ennui surrounding
The worldly bustle, to my ear
For long your tender voice kept sounding,
For long in dreams came features dear.
Time passed. Unruly storms confounded
Old dreams, and I >from year to year
Forgot how tender you had sounded,
Your heavenly features once so dear.
My backwoods days dragged slow and quiet --
Dull fence around, dark vault above --
Devoid of God and uninspired,
Devoid of tears, of fire, of love.
Sleep from my soul began retreating,
And here you once again appear
Before me like a vision fleeting,
A beauty's angel pure and clear.
In ecstasy the heart is beating,
Old joys for it anew revive;
Inspired and God-filled, it is greeting
The fire, and tears, and love alive.
And other Pushkin's poems such as "Confession", Tatyana's letter from Eugeni Onegin and so on
Ah, I love that Byron poem, Alan... I have it posted on one of my blogs.... though in a sense it isn't really a love poem. More of a lament... perhaps with a tinge of bitterness and disdain.
Any love poem by Pablo Neruda is so passionate... so beautiful.
Letter - (Leonard Cohen from Let Us Compare Mythologies)
How you murdered your family
means nothing to me
as your mouth moves across my body
And I know your dreams
of crumbling cities and galloping horses
of the sun coming too close
and the night never ending
but these mean nothing to me
beside your body
I know that outside a war is raging
That you issue orders
That babies are smothered and generals beheaded
But blood means nothing to me
It does not disturb your flesh
tasting blood on your tongue
does not shock me
as my arms grow into your hair
Do not think I do not understand
what happens
after the troops have been massacred
and the harlots put to the sword
And I write this only to rob you
that when one morning my head
hangs dripping with the other generals
from your house gate
that all this was anticipated
and so you will know that it meant nothing to me.
Quote:
I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You
I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.
I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.
Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.
In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.
Nothing more need be said before Senor Neruda.