Come, my beloved,
let us go out into the fields
and lie all night among the flowering henna.
Let us go early to the vineyards
to see if the vine has budded,
if the blossoms have opened
and the pomegranate is in flower.
There I will give you my love.
The air is filled with the scent of the mandrakes
and at our doors
rare fruit of every kind, my love,
I have stored away for you.
-- From The Song of Songs
As translated by Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch
I know it's cliche and not really a love poem, but it is; and too beautiful not to be here:
To be, or not to be; that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die to sleep;
To sleep perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
H.
i don't care how cliche it is , I have always loved it and it means a lot to me on several levels.
Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not for beauties passed away
From field and thicket as the year goes by;
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Nor that a man's desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look with love on me.
This have I known always: Love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales:
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
Last edited by lavendar1; 05-09-2006 at 06:44 PM.
Has this been posted yet? If 'yes,' it's an encore, if 'no,' it should have been:
Let me not to the 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
anabelle
dont u find the poem anabelle a bit should i say creepyOriginally Posted by poeboy
For those of you debating the merit of Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress", I posit Lady Mary Wortley Montague's "The Lover: A Ballad". While I enjoy her tonge-in-cheek description of an ideal lover, she does paint a lovely picture of the ideal, as well as put Marvell and other "Carpe Diem" poets in their place. THE LOVER: A BALLAD
by: Lady Mary Wortley Montague (1689-1762)
I
T length, by so much importunity pressed,
Take, Congreve, at once, the inside of my breast:
This stupid indiff'rence so often you blame,
Is not owing to nature, to fear, or to shame.
I am not so cold as a virgin in lead,
Nor is Sunday's sermon so strong in my head:
I know but too well how time flies along,
That we live but few years, and yet fewer are young.
II
But I hate to be cheated, and never will buy
Long years of repentance for moments of joy.
Oh, was there a man (but where shall I find
Good-sense and good-nature so equally joined?)
Would value his pleasure, contribute to mine;
Not meanly would boast, nor would lewdly design,
Nor over severe, yet not stupidly vain,
For I would have the power, tho' not give the pain.
III
No pedant, yet learned; nor rake-helly gay,
Or laughing, because he has nothing to say;
To all my whole sex obliging and free,
Yet ne'er be he fond of any but me;
In public preserve the decorum that's just,
And shew in his eyes he is true to his trust;
Then rarely approach, and respectfully bow,
But not fulsomely pert, or foppishly low.
IV
But when the long hours of public are past,
And we meet with champagne and a chicken at last,
May ev'ry fond pleasure that moment endear;
Be banish'd afar both discretion and fear!
Forgetting or scorning the airs of the crowd,
He may cease to be formal, and I to be proud,
Till lost in the joy, we confess that we live,
And he may be rude, and yet I may forgive.
V
And that my delight may be solidly fixed,
Let the friend and the lover be handsomely mixed,
In whose tender bosom my soul may confide,
Whose kindness can soothe me, whose counsel can guide,
From such a dear lover as here I describe,
No danger should fright me, no millions should bribe;
But till this astonishing creature I know
As I long have liv'd chaste, I will keep myself so.
VI
I never will stare with the wanton coquet,
Or be caught by a vain affectation of wit.
The toasters and songsters may try all their art,
But never shall enter the pass of my heart.
I loathe the lewd rake, the dress'd fopling despise:
Before such pursuers the nice virgin flies:
And as Ovid has sweetly in parables told,
We harden like trees, and like rivers grow cold.
well, I haven't read all 16 pages of this thread, but I really like
Kublai Kahn for its magical qualities.
My youngest son is named after Oscar Wilde, though, so he always has a soft spot for me..
This is one of my favorites:
George Gordon, Lord Byron
She Walks in Beauty
1
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
2
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd 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.
3
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!
Virtue by luminance is born from the loins of just one glowing light.
-Unknown (Anais Nin perhaps)
Pablo Neruda's I Do Not Love You
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
"Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, obstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact." George Eliot
I just read through the entire thread--thank you for sharing your favorites; I have added a few to mine! I noticed John Donne has been mentioned a number of times, but to my surprise, my very favorite has not been. So here it is:
The Good-Morrow
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den?
'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoveres to new worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies was not mixed equally,
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike that none do slacken, none can die.
~ Lauri
"What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire." Stanley Kunitz
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind’s imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
Indeed!! Sonnet 116 is my favorite sonnet, and definietly one of my favorite love poems...
My favorite is actually a song, For Always, from the movie A.I.
I close my eyes
and there in the shadows I see your light
You come to me out of my dreams across
the night
You take my hand
though you may be so many stars away
I know that our spirits and souls are one
We've circled the moon and we've touched the sun
So here we'll stay
For always, forever
Beyond here and on to eternity
For always, forever
For us there's no time and no space
No barrier love won't erase
Wherever you go
I still know
In my heart you will be
With me
From this day on I'm certain that I'll never be alone
I know what my heart must have always known
That love has a power that's all its own
And for always, forever
Now we can fly
And for always and always
We will go on beyond goodbye
For always, forever
Beyond here and on to eternity
For always and ever
You'll be a part of me
And for always, forever
A thousand tomorrows may cross the sky
And for always and always
We will go on
beyond goodbye
I also love The Highwayman, Annabel Lee, and The Lady of Shalott (though the Lady's love is unrequited).
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.
Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,
because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?
Pablo Neruda
Wow, I had never read this one until this morning - very, very nice . . .
-----
From 'The Book of a Monastic Life'
She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gratefully
into a single cloth--
it's she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration
where the one guest is you.
In the softness of evening
it's you she receives.
You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure you encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,
to hold you.
Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)
Neruda is a maestroAnother one by him:
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.
In dreams begin responsibilities.
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