Unrequited love is a horrible thing to suffer from.
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Unrequited love is a horrible thing to suffer from.
The Indian Serenade
Percy B. Shelley
I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep or 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!
WOW!God me!I am a new comer,but deeply got lost here for so many beautiful poems.....I am from China living in Shanghai ,a good listener and spectator,but I love english cultures so much,and especially by Shelley and Lord Byron!Also here is a popular one in China by Tagore,have perfect translation in Chinese:
The furthest distance
The furthest distance in the world
Is not between life and death
But when I stand in front of you
Yet you don't know that
I love you
The furthest distance in the world
Is not when I stand in front of you
Yet you can't see my love
But when undoubtedly knowing the love from both
Yet cannot be together
The furthest distance in the world
Is not being apart while being in love
But when plainly can not resist the yearning
Yet pretending
You have never been in my heart
The furthest distance in the world
But using one's indifferent heart
To dig an uncrossable river
For the one who loves you!
This is by far my favorite; I think it sharply says it all in a big rush of emotion, fast and quick, the same way that it feels when you reflect on that moment with that person.
i carry your heart with me
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
Maria Pawlikowska - Jasnorzewska
Love
I haven't see you for a month
And nothing. Maybe I'm paler
a little bit sleepy, a little bit quiet,
but it looks possible to live without air!
(translated from Polish)
what is going on in this world? are you guys serious? do you really think that there can be love poems out there better,in any way, than those written by Lord Byron and Keats? the only exception can be Emily Dickinson in her seemingly homosexual poems like ;To have a Susan of my own.
Hey, I can't find that poem on the net, do you have a link for me tan man??
To own a Susan of my ownQuote:
Originally Posted by tinustijger
Emily Dickinson
To own a Susan of my own
Is of itself a Bliss—
Whatever Realm I forfeit, Lord,
Continue me in this!
hi,
i am a new member.
i think that Donne's," A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning" is the most beautiful love poem ever.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Well I was just digging through the archives and I found this! If we're talking about the same song it's Loreena McKinnett!Quote:
Originally Posted by Stanislaw
And look someone else misspelled Shalott! And he likes Star Wars! I think Stanislaw and I must be soul mates. Or maybe we knew each other in a past life! (where has he been anyway?)
Seriously, though. This is a good poem about unrequited love. but I guess it counts as a love poem. although, it is better to read about it than to experience it.
Lola, by the Kinks
I met her in a club down in old soho
Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca-cola
C-o-l-a cola
She walked up to me and she asked me to dance
I asked her her name and in a dark brown voice she said lola
L-o-l-a lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola
Well Im not the world's most physical guy
But when she squeezed me tight she nearly broke my spine
Oh my lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola
Well I'm not dumb but I cant understand
Why she walked like a woman and talked like a man
Oh my lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola
.......
great tune il penser. reminded me of another oldie love poem...um, sorta.
------
I was tired of my lady, we'd been together too long.
Like a worn-out recording, of a favorite song.
So while she lay there sleeping, I read the paper in bed.
And in the personals column, there was this letter I read:
"If you like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain.
If you're not into yoga, if you have half-a-brain.
If you like making love at midnight, in the dunes of the cape.
I'm the lady you've looked for, write to me, and escape."
.........
My Love Is Like To Ice
My love is like to ice, and I to fire:
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold,
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
And feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told,
That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice,
And ice, which is congeal's with senseless cold,
Should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
That it can alter all the course of kind.
Edmund Spenser
annnnd
[ 130 ]
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks,
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go:
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet by heaven I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
Shakespeare
The Panther
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
........
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
We've been studying Shelley pretty extensively on English literature classes but I came across the following poem in one of the Twin Peaks episodes.
Love's Philosophy - Percy Shelley
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and 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?
Weep, Lovers, sith Love's very self doth weep,
And sith the cause for weeping is so great:
when now so many dames, of such estate
In worth, show with their eyes a grief so deep:
For death the churl has laid his leaden sleep
Upon a damsel who was fair of late
Defacing all our earth should celebrate,-
Yea all save virtue, which the soul doth keep
Now hearken how much love did honor her.
I myself saw him in his proper form
Bending above motionless sweet dead,
And often Gazing into Heaven; for there
The south now sits which when her life was warm
Dwelt with the joyful beauty that is fled.
Dante Alighieri,La Vita Nuova, VIII
Translation by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair
DON'T GO FAR OFF, NOT EVEN FOR A DAY
Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.
Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.
........
-Pablo Neruda
LOVE, that word must rank as one, if not the, most misused, abused, and therefore, misunderstood, words in the English language ( and that applies to its equivalent in any language.)
There are 'love poems' that attempt to describe love, and there are those that express it in, often overly, romantic terms.
It is easy to see from the many posts here how varied the meaning can be, or at least, how the variations of its expression can touch the differing emotions of others.
There is also a clear distinction, and one which often causes confusion, between 'love', and being 'in love'.
Just having come to this website, I thought I had better skim through the many contributions to this long thread. I was pleased to find that, I believe, two contributors, one being Monica, or was it Miranda, had included what I feel strongly is the most definitive in describing what 'true' love is, and by so doing, what it isn't.
To understand, and therefore appreciate it, fully, one needs to understand the metaphors Shakespeare uses which relate more to the familiar of his day when
seafaring (wandering bark, and 'height be taken'), and land farming (hand sickle making a compass sweep) had a more closer relevance to daily life than it does today.
How often do we hear the cliched expression in teetering relationships - 'I don't love you anymore'. Well, according to Shakespeare, and I concur, that would be an impossibility. Why? Because love is not from a tap that can be turned on and off. Love, that is real love, is eternal - period! No 'ifs and buts'.
Probably, with but a few exceptions, its nearest example is found in a mother's love for her child. Yes,. there are one or two exceptions even here, but generally, that love is there rock solid, and undying.
I make no apologies for posting it once again.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediment.
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:-
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 ev'n to the edge of doom:-
If this be error, and upon me proved
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
W Shakespeare
As I have said, I find this clearly defines 'True Love'.
As an example of expressing the romantic, I would like to share with you one that you will not find on the internet, nor in any anthology. It was written by one of my Chinese students at Taiwan University. I had been introducing the class to poetry, with great trepidation I might add, and it sparked something
in one or two of my students. This one shook me with its simplicity, and I need not tell you the writer was female, just 21 - her only English was what had been learned in school.
Lovely Words
by Iris Lee
Lovely words flow from your mouth
into my ears
then gently swamp my heart.
Willingly, and unwillingly
I struggle.
Till my lonely heart
is drowned contentedly
in your lovely words.
My English teacher told me that this is the only good love poem she's ever read:
Tonight I Can Write
by Pablo Neruda
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
......
She said this because this poem isn't the typical "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" romantic gibberish... (she's not very romantic, it seems). This poem is "real." I agree.
Well Brigitte, If your teacher goes along with those sentiments in the poem, I would think she is a little indecisive, and confused about 'love'. It is certainly at variance with Shakespeare's idea of love, as it appears to turn it on and off - like so many do with their idea of love.
It illustrates our confusion with the word. It has become so misused, and abused through use over time. This is often because of the way some interchange the word love, with 'in love'.
To me, love, between two people, if it ever existed (Shakespeare defined), would continue after being 'in love' could well have died. or faded. We love our parents, and/or our children, but we are not 'in love' with them.
Perhaps, Brigitte, in that poem, the confusion is occasioned by the writer being confused, or not understanding the difference. By that I mean that they both 'loved' each other, but their being 'in love' as in romantic displays
that people 'in love' seek as an expression, and confirmation,were not always evident and therefore created that doubt.
Just some thought to toss around.
The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
....
-- Dylan Thomas
Evening Song
LOOK off, dear Love, across the shallow sands,
And mark yon meeting of the sun and the sea,
How long they kiss in sight of all the lands.
Ah! longer, longer we.
Now in the sea's red vintage melts the sun,
As Egypt's red pearl dissolved in rosy wine,
And Cleopatra night drinks all. 'Tis done,
Love, lay thine hand in mine.
Come forth, sweet stars, and comfort heaven's heart;
Glimmer, ye waves, round else unlighted sands.
O night! divorce our sun and sky apart
Never our lips, our hands. Sidney Lanier
Excuse me sir/madam, but this "very popular" poem that appears in hundreds, if not thousands of websites, blogs, and BBSes across China is NOT by Tagore. It is a poorly translated version of a "Poetry by relay writing" by a group of Taiwanese students based on two lines of a poem written by a popular female Taiwanese novelist.Quote:
Originally Posted by 远-方
Somewhere along the line, someone put in the "Tagore" tag and post it on one Chinese BBS, and as is always the case, that spread and spread.
Several disclaimers have appeared on various forums, but as usual, more people would rather believe in myth rather than truth.
There are at least 8 different English versions (translations) of this poem, some of which are incomprehensible.
E.g. The remotest distance is not in the world ;
Raw and dead but;
and
On the boundary farthest distance
Is not to living with die
and
The farest distance in the world
is not that between living and death
==============================
I notice there are some Chinese nationals visiting this forum; for them, here is one site you can read up on the background to this "myth". It is written mostly in Chinese.
users.openface.ca/~dstephen/fake-tagore.htm
For people who cannot read Chinese, but are curious about what this is all about, there is one version that is mostly in English:
The Story Behind "Furthest/Farthest Distance"
rainlane.com/dispbbs.asp?boardID=26&ID=24645&page=1
and a "disclaimer" at rpi.edu/~jix/disclaimer.htmlposted by Muyv (Xiaoyun Ji), one of the original translators of the version that is quoted by the poster on this forum.
These are two of my favorite love poems, both by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
"I love her for her smile--her look--her way
Of speaking gently,--for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day" -
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,--and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry, -
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.
To Annabel Lee: Ulalume--A Ballad
THE skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere--
The leaves they were withering and sere:
It was night, in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year:
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir:--
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
Here once, through an alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul--
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll--
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek,
In the ultimate climes of the Pole--
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek,
In the realms of the Boreal Pole.
Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere--
Our memories were treacherous and sere;
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year--
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)
We noted not the dim lake of Auber,
(Though once we had journeyed down here)
We remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
And now, as the night was senescent,
And star-dials pointed to morn--
As the star-dials hinted of morn--
At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn--
Astarte's bediamonded crescent,
Distinct with its duplicate horn.
And I said--"She is warmer than Dian;
She rolls through an ether of sighs--
She revels in a region of sighs.
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion,
To point us the path to the skies--
To the Lethean peace of the skies--
Come up, in despite of the Lion,
To shine on us with her bright eyes--
Come up, through the lair of the Lion,
With love in her luminous eyes."
But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said--"Sadly this star I mistrust--
Her pallor I strangely mistrust--
Ah, hasten!--ah, let us not linger!
Ah,fly!--let us fly!--for we must."
In terror she spoke; letting sink her
Wings till they trailed in the dust--
In agony sobbed; letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust--
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.
I replied--"This is nothing but dreaming.
Let us on, by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its Sybillic splendor is beaming
With Hope and in Beauty to-night--
See!--it flickers up the sky through the night!
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming
And be sure it will lead us aright--
We surely may trust to a gleaming
That cannot but guide us aright
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."
Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom--
And conquered her scruples and gloom;
And we passed to the end of the vista--
But were stopped by the door of a tomb--
By the door of a legended tomb:--
And I said--"What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied--"Ulalume--Ulalume!--
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"
Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crisped and sere--
As the leaves that were withering and sere--
And I cried--"It was surely October,
On this very night of last year,
That I journeyed--I journeyed down here!--
That I brought a dread burden down here--
On this night, of all nights in the year,
Ah; what demon hath tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber--
This misty mid region of Weir:--
Well I know, now this dank tarn of Auber--
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."
Said we, then--the two, then--"Ah, can it
Have been that the woodlandish ghouls--
The pitiful, the merciful ghouls,
To bar up our way and to ban it
From the secret that lies in these wolds--
From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds--
Have drawn up the spectre of a planet
From the limbo of lunary souls--
This sinfully scintillant planet
From the Hell of the planetary souls?"
Edgar Allan Poe
(Perhaps no exceeding the mystic beauty of Ulalume, still a unique and intense view of this subject:) " Love Is A Parallax" by Sylvia Plath
'Perspective betrays with its dichotomy:
train tracks always meet, not here, but only
in the impossible mind's eye;
horizons beat a retreat as we embark
on sophist seas to overtake that mark
where wave pretends to drench real sky.'
'Well then, if we agree, it is not odd
that one man's devil is another's god
or that the solar spectrum is
a multitude of shaded grays; suspense
on the quicksands of ambivalence
is our life's whole nemesis.
......
If only I could handle this love I have
Id give it to you
If only I owend the world
Id give It to you
If only I had money
Id give it to you
If only you loved me
Id love you
"I would not call it the best but I wrote it does that make it the worst??"
This has always been one of my favorite poems!Quote:
Originally Posted by quasimodo1
To Bakiryu: Yea, the ballad...Ulalume by Edgar Allen Poe just resonates better with every re-read, don't you think. Much better than the poems everybody associates with Poe. I'll have to look up the poet you posted, can't say i remember much about him. quasimodo1
eh, what poet? *looks around* The one in my sig? :blush:
Sonnet 145 Those lips that Love's own hand did make
Those lips that Love's own hand did make
Breathed forth the sound that said 'I hate'
To me that languish'd for her sake;
But when she saw my woeful state,
Straight in her heart did mercy come,
Chiding that tongue that ever sweet
Was used in giving gentle doom,
And taught it thus anew to greet:
'I hate' she alter'd with an end,
That follow'd it as gentle day
Doth follow night, who like a fiend
From heaven to hell is flown away;
'I hate' from hate away she threw,
And saved my life, saying 'not you.'
To Stepofthenight: Use of Shakespeare is like bringing out the best wine when the wedding party is almost over. quasimodo1
Vitam Impendere Amori by Guillaume Apollinaire
(Vitam Impendere Amori: To Threaten Life for Love)
Love is dead within your arms
Do you remember his encounter
He’s dead you restore the charms
He returns at your encounter
Another spring of springs gone past
I think of all its tenderness
Farewell season done at last
You’ll return as tenderly
1.Love's Philosophy - by Percy Bysshe Shelly
2.Desire - by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
3.I Gave Myself To Him - by Emily Dickinson
4.We'll go no more a-roving - by Lord Byron
5.The Clod and the Pebble - by William Blake
...etc.
Corinne's Last Love Song
I
HOW beautiful, how beautiful you streamed upon my sight,
In glory and in grandeur, as a gorgeous sunset-light!
How softly, soul-subduing, fell your words upon mine ear,
Like low aerial music when some angel hovers near!
What tremulous, faint ecstasy to clasp your hand in mine,
Till the darkness fell upon me of a glory too divine!
The air around grew languid with our intermingled breath,
And in your beauty's shadow I sank motionless as death.
I saw you not, I heard not, for a mist was on my brain--
I only felt that life could give no joy like that again.
II
And this was Love, I knew it not, but blindly floated on,
And now I'm on the ocean waste, dark, desolate, alone;
The waves are raging round me--I'm reckless where they guide;
No hope is left to right me, no strength to stem the tide.
As a leaf along the torrent, a cloud across the sky,
As dust upon the whirlwind, so my life is drifting by.
The dream that drank the meteor's light--the form from Heav'n has flown--
The vision and the glory, they are passing--they are gone.
Oh! love is frantic agony, and life one throb of pain;
Yet I would bear its darkest woes to dream that dream again.
Jane Francesca Lady Wilde... also Irish nationalist, poet and editor.
i think this is a love poem in a universal sense. certainly a favorite of mine, perhaps love enough. :)
Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same
He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.
Robert Frost
i love you much(most beautiful darling)
by: e.e. cummings
.................................................. ..........
i love you much(most beautiful darling)
more than anyone on the earth and i
like you better than everything in the sky
-sunlight and singing welcome your coming
First Love ...title should read, John Clare
I ne'er was struck before that hour
With love so sudden and so sweet.
Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower
And stole my heart away complete.
My face turned pale, a deadly pale.
My legs refused to walk away,
And when she looked what could I ail
My life and all seemed turned to clay.
And then my blood rushed to my face
And took my eyesight quite away.
The trees and bushes round the place
Seemed midnight at noonday.
I could not see a single thing,
Words from my eyes did start.
They spoke as chords do from the string,
And blood burnt round my heart.
Are flowers the winter's choice
Is love's bed always snow
She seemed to hear my silent voice
Not love appeals to know.
I never saw so sweet a face
As that I stood before.
My heart has left its dwelling place
And can return no more.
- John Clare
Some Kiss
There is some kiss we want with our whole lives:
the touch of the spirit on the body.
Seawater begs the pearl to break its shell
and the lily, how passionately it needs some wild darling.
At night I open the window
and I ask the moon to come and press its face against mine,
breathe into me.
Close the language door and open the love window.
The moon won't use the door, only the window.
Rumi
This thread's great. Still working my way through it. In the meantime, here's another contribution from me by Carl Sandburg:
The Great Hunt
I cannot tell you now;
When the wind's drive and whirl
Blow me along no longer,
And the wind's a whisper at last-
Maybe I'll tell you then-
some other time.
When the rose's flash to the sunset
Reels to the rack and the twist,
And the rose is a red bygone,
When the face I love is going
And the gate the end shall clang,
And it's no use to beckon or say, " So long"-
Maybe I'll tell you then-
some other time.
I never knew any more beautiful than you:
I have hunted you under my thoughts,
I have broken down under the wind
And into the roses looking for you.
I shall never find any
greater than you.