BS: Your favorite love poem

Subject: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Wesley S
Date: 05 Feb 09 - 04:30 PM

With Valentines Day fast approaching I was wondering if anyone had a favorite poem of love that they would like to share.

I understand that this is from "The Prophet":

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they
quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 05 Feb 09 - 04:45 PM

PHYSICS OF THE HEART
(Gravity is such an insistent thing)

And so I fell
into that headlong rush
infatuation
without even trying
to catch myself

Yes I fell
and it became love
and so was useless
to ward off the bruise
my heart was certain
to receive

And so I fell
in uncertainty
and pain
and fear
waiting to hit bottom

Thus I fell
into love and friendship
which outdistanced
the giddiness of hope
and the ache of desire
and the terror of probability
of so lonely life

Still I fall

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 05 Feb 09 - 04:51 PM

Carrefour

O you,
Who came upon me once
Stretched under apple-trees just after bathing,
Why did you not strangle me before speaking
Rather than fill me with the wild white honey of your words
And then leave me to the mercy
Of the forest bees?

-Amy Lowell

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: ClaireBear
Date: 05 Feb 09 - 04:54 PM

Here's a little snippet from Wendell Berry's "The Country of Marriage" (from the collection of the same name):

V.

Our bond is no little economy based on the exchange
of my love and work for yours, so much for so much
of an expendable fund. We don't know what its limits are--
that puts us in the dark. We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on discovering
we are more together than we thought?
You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.
Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing
a man may be hard up to be worthy of. He can only
accept it, as a plant accepts from all the bounty of the light
enough to live, and then accepts the dark,
passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I
have fallen time and again from the great strength
of my desire, helpless, into your arms.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 05 Feb 09 - 04:57 PM

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
though i have closed myself as fingers,
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 colour 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
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

        -- e. e. cummings

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: beardedbruce
Date: 05 Feb 09 - 04:59 PM

one of them, anyway...

Sonnet 27/05/05    Mid Night at Franklin's    MVII


The witching hour, and you have cast a spell,
That I watch every move you make. I try
To turn away, but eyes return. Thoughts tell
I am a fool, but cannot hopes deny.
I watch you dance, and dream, but dare not ask
For more than smile. I cannot find the nerve
To offer more than words, though my words mask
Desires: Yet, what can my mere words deserve?
You light dreams with your smile, and fill the night
With flash of eyes: Should I not let dreams form
In which I wake at dawn holding you tight,
Or of chill evening when I'd keep you warm?
How can I dream, and not be thought a fool?
Your beauty all of reason overrules.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Rapparee
Date: 05 Feb 09 - 05:21 PM

If you'll be my valentine
I will be your concubine.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Ed T
Date: 05 Feb 09 - 05:33 PM

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I like cornflakes
Can you skate?

Love you, mate

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: skipy
Date: 05 Feb 09 - 05:53 PM

I love you in your underwear
I love you in your nighty
But when the moon flits 'ore your tits
Oh! Jesus Christ almighty

Skipy

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: gnu
Date: 05 Feb 09 - 06:09 PM

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. If it wasn't for you, my _____ would rust.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 05 Feb 09 - 07:37 PM

Ruth Archer, I must protest!   You beat me to "somewhere i have never traveled"! My absolute favorite love poem!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 05 Feb 09 - 07:45 PM

another e.e. cummings:

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 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)

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Feb 09 - 07:49 PM

favorite is a loaded term... but here is one not seen very often. Very sensual.




As We Are So Wonderfully Done
with Each Other
Kenneth Patchen


As we are so wonderfully done with each other
We can walk into our separate sleep
On floors of music where the milkwhite cloak of childhood lies

Oh my love, my golden lark, my soft long doll
Your lips have splashed my dull house with print of flowers
My hands are crooked where they spilled over your dear curving

It is good to be weary from that brilliant work
It is being God to feel your breathing under me

A waterglass on the bureau fills with morning . . .
Don't let anyone in to wake us

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 05 Feb 09 - 07:50 PM

and another e.e. cummings, in a little different mode:

may i feel said he

   may i feel said he
   (i'll squeal said she
   just once said he)
   it's fun said she


   (may i touch said he
   how much said she
   a lot said he)
   why not said she


   (let's go said he
   not too far said she
   what's too far said he
   where you are said she)


   may i stay said he
   (which way said she
   like this said he
   if you kiss said she


   may i move said he
   is it love said she)
   if you're willing said he
   (but you're killing said she


   but it's life said he
   but your wife said she
   now said he)
   ow said she


   (tiptop said he
   don't stop said she
   oh no said he)
   go slow said she


   (cccome?said he
   ummm said she)
   you're divine!said he
   (you are Mine said she)



---
I've GOT to stop this, to give someone else a chance!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Joe_F
Date: 05 Feb 09 - 08:37 PM

Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
    Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
    Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
    Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
    Jenny kiss'd me.
-- Leigh Hunt

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heav'n 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 possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in such thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at heaven's gate arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
    For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
    That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
-- Shakespeare

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Feb 09 - 08:47 PM

one more Patchen:


For Miriam   

As beautiful as the hands
Of a winter tree
And as holy
Base are they beside thee

As dross beside thee

O green birds
That sing the earth to wakefulness
As tides the sea
Drab are they beside thee

As tinsel beside thee

O pure
And fair as the clouds
Wandering
Over a summer field
They are crass beside thee
The hands
Move through the starhair

As tawdry beside thee

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Feb 09 - 08:53 PM

Robert Herrick


To Anthea Who May Command Him Any Thing

BID me to live, and I will live        
Thy Protestant to be;        
Or bid me love, and I will give        
A loving heart to thee.        

A heart as soft, a heart as kind,                 
A heart as sound and free        
As in the whole world thou canst find,        
That heart I'll give to thee.        

Bid that heart stay, and it will stay,        
To honour thy decree;         10
Or bid it languish quite away.        
And 't shall do so for thee.        

Bid me to weep, and I will weep        
While I have eyes to see;        
And having none, yet I will keep        
A heart to weep for thee.        

Bid me despair, and I'll despair,        
Under that cypress tree;        
Or bid me die, and I will dare        
E'en Death, to die for thee.        

Thou art my life, my love, my heart,        
The very eyes of me,        
And hast command of every part,        
To live and die for thee.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Rapparee
Date: 05 Feb 09 - 08:53 PM

To his Coy Mistress
Andrew Marvell

Had we but World enough, and Time,        
This coyness Lady were no crime.        
We would sit down, and think which way        
To walk, and pass our long Loves Day.        
Thou by the Indian Ganges side              
Should'st Rubies find: I by the Tide        
Of Humber would complain. I would        
Love you ten years before the Flood:        
And you should if you please refuse        
Till the Conversion of the Jews.        
My vegetable Love should grow        
Vaster then Empires, and more slow.        
An hundred years should go to praise        
Thine Eyes, and on thy Forehead Gaze.        
Two hundred to adore each Breast:        
But thirty thousand to the rest.        
An Age at least to every part,        
And the last Age should show your Heart.        
For Lady you deserve this State;        
Nor would I love at lower rate.        
But at my back I alwaies hear        
Times winged Charriot hurrying near:        
And yonder all before us lye        
Desarts of vast Eternity.        
Thy Beauty shall no more be found;        
Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound        
My ecchoing Song: then Worms shall try        
That long preserv'd Virginity:        
And your quaint Honour turn to dust;        
And into ashes all my Lust.        
The Grave's a fine and private place,        
But none I think do there embrace.        
Now therefore, while the youthful hew        
Sits on thy skin like morning dew        
And while thy willing Soul transpires        
At every pore with instant Fires,        
Now let us sport us while we may;        
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,        
Rather at once our Time devour,        
Than languish in his slow-chapt pow'r.        
Let us roll all our Strength, and all        
Our sweetness, up into one Ball:        
And tear our Pleasures with rough strife,        
Thorough the Iron gates of Life.        
Thus, though we cannot make our Sun        
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Mickey191
Date: 06 Feb 09 - 12:55 AM

Some very beautiful thoughts on love & a couple of laugh out loud pieces. I give you Ambrose Bierce thoughts on love:

A temporary insanity, cured by marriage or by removal of the afflicted patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder   This disease is prevalent among civilized races living under artificial condiions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 06 Feb 09 - 02:40 AM

I held a beautiful hand last night,
So fair that I could sing.
The most beautiful hand I ever held.......
Four Aces and a King!

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Musket
Date: 06 Feb 09 - 05:41 AM

Why can't you see I love you when it's sticking out a mile

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: SINSULL
Date: 06 Feb 09 - 09:17 AM

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)   
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 every day'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.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Feb 09 - 10:52 AM

only three sonnets so far?

hmmm...

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 06 Feb 09 - 11:06 AM

W. Shakespeare
Sonnet #128

oft, when thou, my music, music play'st,
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway'st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,
At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand!
To be so tickled, they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more blest than living lips.
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.



Tamara Hiatt
The Dark Lady's Response

T'give you my lips to kiss, I would. Thou say'st
I may give fingers to make music's rounds.
But love's sweet words which from thy lips now play'st
Tis music sweeter far than from me sounds.
Jealous I of words that sentry do keep
My lips from thy lips. Words as wardens stand.
They fright off my advances and plunge me deep
In blushing timidity. Thy lips command.
My kisses with thy words would change their state
If thou would'st bid "Be still!" to thy glib lips.
"Loquacity is love's en'my," thou prate,
Yet see'st not how love o'er endless words trips.
Since thou relish in words and not my kiss,
Music thy word is. My lot is to list'.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 06 Feb 09 - 11:24 AM

Not my favourite love poem, that's by another far more minimal poet altogether, and is mine to know. But this by Neruda gets close. Such lush sensuality.

"The Tiger"
By Pablo Neruda

I am the tiger.
I lie in wait for you among leaves
broad as ingots
of wet mineral.

The white river grows
beneath the fog. You come.

Naked you submerge.
I wait.

Then in a leap
of fire, blood, teeth,
with a claw slash I tear away
your bosom, your hips.

I drink your blood, I break
your limbs one by one.

And I remain watching
for years in the forest
over your bones, your ashes,
motionless, far
from hatred and anger,
disarmed in your death,
crossed by lianas,
motionless in the rain,
relentless sentinel
of my murderous love.

I am the condor, I fly
over you who walk
and suddenly in a wheeling
of wind, feather, claws,
I assault you and I lift you
in a whistling cyclone
of hurricaned cold.

And to my tower of snow,
to my dark eyrie
I take you and you live alone,
and you cover yourself with feathers
and you fly above the world,
motionless on the heights.

Female condor, let us pounce
upon this red prey,
let us tear life
that passes throbbing
and lift together
our wild flight.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: olddude
Date: 06 Feb 09 - 12:50 PM

AT LAST

Author: Elizabeth Akers Allen

At last, when all the summer shine
   That warmed life's early hours is past,
Your loving fingers seek for mine
   And hold them close at last at last!
Not oft the robin comes to build
   Its nest upon the leafless bough
By autumn robbed, by winter chilled,
   But you, dear heart, you love me now.

Though there are shadows on my brow
   And furrows on my cheek, in truth,
The marks where Time's remorseless plough
   Broke up the blooming sward of Youth,
Though fled is every girlish grace
   Might win or hold a lover's vow,
Despite my sad and faded face,
   And darkened heart, you love me now!

I count no more my wasted tears;
   They left no echo of their fall;
I mourn no more my lonesome years;
   This blessed hour atones for all.
I fear not all that Time or Fate
   May bring to burden heart or brow,
Strong in the love that came so late,
   Our souls shall keep it always now!

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: topical tom
Date: 07 Feb 09 - 12:22 PM

"She Walks in Beauty" by George Gordon, Lord Byron:

She Walks In Beauty
by George Gordon, Lord Byron

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.

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.

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!

              
<< Previous Poem

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Amergin
Date: 07 Feb 09 - 01:35 PM

I married for love...that didn't work...now I want to marry for money.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Peter T.
Date: 07 Feb 09 - 02:28 PM

This heartbreaking poem of Yeats' is my favourite. I love the way you think it's over before its over. The last two lines are almost a bonus. Also the lovely feminine ending, the downbeat at the end is so brilliant.

One that is ever kind said yesterday:
"Your well-beloved's hair has threads of grey,
And little shadows come about her eyes;
Time can but make it easier to be wise
Though now it seems impossible, and so
All that you need is patience."
Heart cries, "No, I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain.
Time can but make her beauty over again:
Because of that great nobleness of hers
The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,
Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways
When all the wild Summer was in her gaze."

Heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head,
You'd know the folly of being comforted.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: kendall
Date: 07 Feb 09 - 08:25 PM

The Raven by E.A. Poe

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 07 Feb 09 - 09:26 PM

The Raven, a love poem?

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Joe_F
Date: 07 Feb 09 - 10:24 PM

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

        -- William Butler Yeats

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: kendall
Date: 08 Feb 09 - 08:03 AM

Sure the Raven is a love poem. Pining for the lost Lenore etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 08 Feb 09 - 09:03 AM

"Oh love that steals my dreams,
That will not let me rest by night or day.
That makes my sadness weep,
Now that she has gone thither, far away.
Oh love that steals my sense.
That takes away all reason from my brain.
That makes me think of nought,
Except that I should be with her again.
Oh love that steals my life,
That rests the knife so easy in my palm.
That opens up the wound,
To let the blood like some relieving balm.
Oh love, I die for you ,
The blood slips from my body oh so fast.
Here lain upon your grave,
Is where I deign to breathe my very last.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 08 Feb 09 - 10:48 AM

Kendall, you're right about the Lost Lenore. I'd forgotten Lenore. For the following reason:

I still don't think of The Raven as a love poem; it's a sound-of-words (as most of his poetry), mood poem. Lenore is simply in there to hang dejection on, as I see it.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Mickey191
Date: 08 Feb 09 - 12:40 PM

"For You"

Just a look in your eyes again
Just to lay in your arms
Just to be the first one always there for you
Just to live in your laughter
Just to sing in your heart
Just to see everyone of your dreams come true

Just to sit by your window
Just to touch in the night
Just to offer a prayer each day for you
Just to long for your kisses
Just to dream of your sighs
Just to know that Id give my life for you

For you for the rest of my life
For you all the best of my life
For you alone, only for you

Just to wake up each morning
Just to live by my side
Just to know that youre never really far away
Just a reason for living
Just to say I adore
Just to know that you're here in my heart to stay

For you for the rest of my life
For you all the best of my life
For you alone, only for you

Just the words of a love song
Just the beat of my heart
Just the pledge of my life, my love, for you


John Denver

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: frogprince
Date: 08 Feb 09 - 04:34 PM

I can't pin down one single favorite right now. I've known and liked a lot of what's already been added; all beautiful stuff.

Dare I add a home-grown song?



   
                     Somewhere Lost in the Blue

Without her I'd grown older    far faster than grown wise -
Just worn a little closer to the bone;
I'd sailed to distant shores,    I'd slept on dusty floors;
I'd made my peace with goin' it alone.

Chorus: She's a myth and a myst'ry to me,
              Entirely too good to be true;
              I look into her eyes -- I'm flying through the skies;
              Somewhere, lost in the blue

She's softened me with laughter; she's melted me with tears;
She's proved to me two hearts can beat as one;
And ev'ry now and then, I won't say where or when,
I've seen her walking naked in the sun.

Chorus: She's a myth and a myst'ry to me,
              Entirely too good to be true;
              I look into her eyes -- I'm flying through the skies;
              Somewhere, lost in the blue

I'd no more miss her now    than I'd miss the morning sun,
Or moonlight, if the sun had never shone;
And I could rest my head    without her there in bed
As easily as sleep on broken stone.

Chorus: She's a myth and a myst'ry to me,
              Entirely too good to be true;
              I look into her eyes -- I'm flying through the skies;
              Somewhere, lost in the blue

                                                Dean Elkins, 2002

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Cats
Date: 09 Feb 09 - 06:26 AM

Shakespeare. 'love is not love which alters when alteration finds'.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: GUEST,scorpio
Date: 09 Feb 09 - 07:31 PM

The words to Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne".

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Abdul The Bul Bul
Date: 10 Feb 09 - 05:36 AM

As with the song that grabs you and you have to make yours.. I was given this episode of my life.

Love and Age

I play'd with you 'mid cowslips blowing,
When I was six and you were four;
When garlands weaving, flower-balls throwing,
Were pleasures soon to please no more.
Through groves and meads, o'er grass and heather,
With little playmates, to and fro,
We wander'd hand in hand together;
But that was sixty years ago.

You grew a lovely roseate maiden,
And still our early love was strong;
Still with no care our days were laden,
They glided joyously along;
And I did love you very dearly,
How dearly words want power to show;
I thought your heart was touch'd as nearly;
But that was fifty years ago.

Then other lovers came around you,
Your beauty grew from year to year,
And many a splendid circle found you
The centre of its glimmering sphere.
I saw you then, first vows forsaking,
On rank and wealth your hand bestow;
O, then I thought my heart was breaking!--
But that was forty years ago.

And I lived on, to wed another:
No cause she gave me to repine;
And when I heard you were a mother,
I did not wish the children mine.
My own young flock, in fair progression,
Made up a pleasant Christmas row:
My joy in them was past expression;
But that was thirty years ago.

You grew a matron plump and comely,
You dwelt in fashion's brightest blaze;
My earthly lot was far more homely;
But I too had my festal days.
No merrier eyes have ever glisten'd
Around the hearth-stone's wintry glow,
Than when my youngest child was christen'd;
But that was twenty years ago.

Time pass'd. My eldest girl was married,
And I am now a grandsire gray;
One pet of four years old I've carried
Among the wild-flower'd meads to play.
In our old fields of childish pleasure,
Where now, as then, the cowslips blow,
She fills her basket's ample measure;
And that is not ten years ago.

But though first love's impassion'd blindness
Has pass'd away in colder light,
I still have thought of you with kindness,
And shall do, till our last good-night.
The ever-rolling silent hours
Will bring a time we shall not know,
When our young days of gathering flowers
Will be an hundred years ago.

Thomas Love Peacock

Not my favourite but means a lot.

Al

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Feb 09 - 05:40 AM

The Song of Solomon - not least for the anal sex in Chapter 5 Verse 4.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 10 Feb 09 - 05:53 AM

For my Beloved and me, John Donne, 'The Good Morrow'.

(OK, OK, I know I have posted on this previously, but it is, I think, always worth a reprise.)

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 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 things controls
And makes this little room an everywhere.
Let sea explorers to new worlds have gone.
Let maps to others worlds on worlds have shown.
Let us have one world. Each hath, and is, one.

My face in thine eye, mine in thine appears,
And true, plain souls do in those eyes there rest.
Where could we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp North, without declining West ?
Whatever dyes was not mixed equally.
If our two souls be one . . .

. . . none can sicken, neither die.

From his (Donne's) 'America, my new found land . . . '

. . . Licence my roving hands, that they may go
Before, behind, above, between, below . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 10 Feb 09 - 06:02 AM

"not least for the anal sex in Chapter 5 Verse 4."

LOL...Still choking on my toast after that.

Funny how my mind has always managed to unconsciously rephrase that as a reference to 'fanny/womb' or something. Never thought of it as a literal reference to anal sex before. Never even thought about it before. I must be a secret prude.

Because of all the fertile imagery in the rest of the Song, I wonder if it *is* a literal reference to anal sex, or just a bi-product of unsatisfactory translation? Anal sex, as a pragmatic form of contraception, somehow doesn't seem to fit the rest of the symbolic imagery - where everything else is begetting and reproducing.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Jim McLean
Date: 10 Feb 09 - 07:13 AM

Thomas Campbell

HOW delicious is the winning   
Of a kiss at Love's beginning,   
When two mutual hearts are sighing   
For the knot there's no untying!   
   
Yet remember, 'midst your wooing,         
Love has bliss, but Love has ruin;   
Other smiles may make you fickle,   
Tears for other charms may trickle.   
   
Love he comes, and Love he tarries,   
Just as fate or fancy carries;   
Longest stays when sorest chidden,   
Laughs and flies when press'd and bidden.   
   
Bind the sea to slumber stilly,   
Bind its odour to the lily,   
Bind the aspen ne'er to quiver,   
Then bind Love to last for ever.   
   
Love's a fire that needs renewal   
Of fresh beauty for its fuel;   
Love's wing moults when caged and captured,   
Only free he soars enraptured.   
   
Can you keep the bee from ranging,   
Or the ringdove's neck from changing?   
No! nor fetter'd Love from dying   
In the knot there's no untying.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: jacqui.c
Date: 10 Feb 09 - 08:08 AM

INDELIBLE KISS

Don't promise me a cliche
The one of love and life
Kiss me inside my head where I hurt
Cradle my face
Sign your name in years
Kiss me indelibly

Peter Phillips

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Feb 09 - 08:16 AM

doesn't seem to fit the rest of the symbolic imagery - where everything else is begetting and reproducing.

I suppose it all rests on the extent to which a cultural / mythological / scientific awareness of the causal relationship between sexual intercourse & conception determines sexual behaviour. This gets back to something very Gnostic in respect of the pragmatically mundane nature of conception in relationship to the glorious palaver of human sexual intercourse, which is adequately reflected in the Song of Solomon, which is absolutely dripping.

The mechanism of human sexuality is less determined by its actual function as it is by ensuring that our behaviour is such that procreation will, upon occasion, take place. Somewhere, no doubt, there will be statistics showing the proportion of instances of heterosexual intercourse that result in actual conceptions - and those that don't. Not only will this prove fascinating reading, but will effectively give the lie to the somewhat perverse notion that sex is somehow about procreation and is, therefore, somehow natural to that end - the implication being that homosexual intercourse is, therefore, an abomination in the eyes of God and wholly unnatural to His purpose.

My feeling is we can divorce sexual intercourse from procreation to the extent where the two things have nothing to do with one another in any sense that is other than purely coincidental. The impulse to make love, is not the impulse to procreate, and procreation is merely a random and by no means inevitable (or welcome) by-product of a procedure which is of far greater significance to the human cause than procreation will ever be.

Otherwise: Anal Sex in Accordance with God's Will

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: lefthanded guitar
Date: 10 Feb 09 - 08:14 PM

It's about love and it's about love as broad as the universe and it's about more than just love.

Yeats -


THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Mrrzy
Date: 11 Feb 09 - 01:23 PM

John Anderson, my jo, John. It's also what brought me to the Mudcat, looking for the rest of the words.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favorite love poem
From: Joe_F
Date: 11 Feb 09 - 09:31 PM

Elegy, by George E. Starbuck

O lovers cold on mountain drives
O lovers warm in valleys
O bold loves where the sand-flea lives
O furtive loves in alleys,
Featherbeds are dear but sex
    is cheap,
Pull your dashboards tight about your necks
    and sleep.

Long are the midnights where the spotlight plays,
Soft are the motors of the night patrols,
You sink to rest, and float among your days:
The boastings by the lockers in the halls,
The maps to where the war is on the walls:

You wish yourself in Canaan or in Carthage,
Pitching grenades around the sun-struck corners;
You hide behind your books the pulps of carnage
And flip a spitball at the front-bench mourner:
He also dreams of machs and afterburners.

And even those who twist them, dream of knives:
And heroes find their heroes in a book:
The wing-commander shuts his _Plutarch's Lives_,
The gob his _Batman_, thug his _Captain Hook_,
Each with the Far Antilles in his look.

Only, where dreams converge, at impact, zero,
The countercurrent takes its pulse, and runs
Through worlds of trouble sleeps, to you as hero;
And we in bombers, planting sudden suns
That teem upon the earth by megatons --

We in the furrows, spitting fire to windward,
Eternally astonished that the wind
Spits back -- we happy multitude -- we kindred
Haunters of beaches, mountains drives and blind
Alleys, -- live on the careless selves we left behind.

White is the flesh entangled in the steel,
Thrusting against the dead accelerator:
The moon its timeless lacquer sheds on heel
And trampled skirt alike -- on nymph and satyr:
So in our dreams we sleep to dream a greater.

But lovers wake, the spotlight swings,
The crunch is on the gravel:
Start it, gun it, give it wings,
Pull in your ears and travel:
The world is wide God knows, but sex
    is deep:
Pull your dashboards tight about your necks
    and sleep.