General Poetry Lounge

• #60 Reply
  Posted by Clay Death on 02 Mar, 2015 18:31
• At Last
  
  
  
   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!
   
• 
  
• #61 Reply
  Posted by Clay Death on 02 Mar, 2015 18:32
• Longing
  
  
   by Matthew Arnold (1822 1888)
  
  
  
   Come to me in my dreams, and then
   By day I shall be well again.
   For then the night will more than pay
   The hopeless longing of the day.
  
   Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
   A messenger from radiant climes,
   And smile on thy new world, and be
   As kind to others as to me.
  
   Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,
   Come now, and let me dream it truth.
   And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
   And say My love! why sufferest thou?
  
   Come to me in my dreams, and then
   By day I shall be well again.
   For then the night will more than pay
   The hopeless longing of the day.
  
• 
  
• #62 Reply
  Posted by Clay Death on 02 Mar, 2015 18:34
• Lullaby
  
  
   by  W. H. Auden
  
  
  
   Lay Your Sleeping head, my love,
   Human on my faithless arm:
   Time and fevers burn away
   Individual beauty from
   Thoughtful children, and the grave
   Proves the child ephemeral:
   But in my arms till break of day
   Let the living creature lie,
   Mortal, guilty, but to me
   The entirely beautiful.
  
   Soul and body have no bounds:
   To lovers as they lie upon
   Her tolerant enchanted slope
   In their ordinary swoon,
   Grave the vision Venus sends
   Of supernatural sympathy,
   Universal love and hope;
   While an abstract insight wakes
   Among the glaciers and the rocks
   The hermit's carnal ecstasy,
  
   Certainty, fidelity
   On the stroke of midnight pass
   Like vibrations of a bell
   And fashionable madmen raise
   Their pedantic boring cry:
   Every farthing of the cost.
   All the dreaded cards foretell.
   Shall be paid, but from this night
   Not a whisper, not a thought.
   Not a kiss nor look be lost.
  
   Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
   Let the winds of dawn that blow
   Softly round your dreaming head
   Such a day of welcome show
   Eye and knocking heart may bless,
   Find our mortal world enough;
   Noons of dryness find you fed
   By the involuntary powers,
   Nights of insult let you pass
   Watched by every human love.
  
• 
  
• #63 Reply
  Posted by Clay Death on 02 Mar, 2015 18:35
• Love's Trinity
  
  
  
   by Alfred Austin
  
  
  
   Soul, heart, and body, we thus singly name,
   Are not in love divisible and distinct,
   But each with each inseparably link'd.
   One is not honour, and the other shame,
   But burn as closely fused as fuel, heat, and flame.
  
   They do not love who give the body and keep
   The heart ungiven; nor they who yield the soul,
   And guard the body. Love doth give the whole;
   Its range being high as heaven, as ocean deep,
   Wide as the realms of air or planet's curving sweep
     
       
  
• 
  
• #64 Reply
  Posted by Clay Death on 02 Mar, 2015 18:36
• Love Arm'd
  
  
  
   by Aphra Behn
  
  
  
  
   Love in Fantastique Triumph sat,
   Whilst bleeding Hearts around him flow'd,
   For whom Fresh pains he did create,
   And strange Tryanic power he show'd;
   From thy Bright Eyes he took his fire,
   Which round about, in sport he hurl'd;
   But 'twas from mine he took desire,
   Enough to undo the Amorous World.
   From me he took his sighs and tears,
   From thee his Pride and Crueltie;
   From me his Languishments and Feares,
   And every Killing Dart from thee;
   Thus thou and I, the God have arm'd,
   And sett him up a Deity;
   But my poor Heart alone is harm'd,
   Whilst thine the Victor is, and free.
     
• 
  
• #65 Reply
  Posted by Clay Death on 02 Mar, 2015 18:37
• Because She Would Ask Me Why I Loved Her
  
  
  
  
  by Christopher Brennan (1870-1932)
  
  
  
   If questioning would make us wise
   No eyes would ever gaze in eyes;
   If all our tale were told in speech
   No mouths would wander each to each.
  
   Were spirits free from mortal mesh
   And love not bound in hearts of flesh
   No aching breasts would yearn to meet
   And find their ecstasy complete.
  
   For who is there that lives and knows
   The secret powers by which he grows?
   Were knowledge all, what were our need
   To thrill and faint and sweetly bleed?
  
   Then seek not, sweet, the "If" and "Why"
   I love you now until I die.
   For I must love because I live
   And life in me is what you give.
  
• 
  
• #66 Reply
  Posted by Clay Death on 02 Mar, 2015 18:38
• Sonnets from the Portuguese 43: How Do I Love Thee
  
  
  
   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.
   
  
  - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
  
• 
  
• #67 Reply
  Posted by Clay Death on 02 Mar, 2015 18:40
• She Walks In Beauty
  
  
  
  
   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!
  
   - Lord Byron
• 
  
• #68 Reply
  Posted by Clay Death on 02 Mar, 2015 18:41
• First Love
  
  
  
   by 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.
• 
  
• #69 Reply
  Posted by Clay Death on 02 Mar, 2015 18:42
• Love
  
  
  
   by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  
  
  
   And in Life's noisiest hour,
   There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
   The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy.
   You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within ;
   And to the leading Love-throb in the Heart
   Thro' all my Being, thro' my pulse's beat ;
   You lie in all my many Thoughts, like Light,
   Like the fair light of Dawn, or summer Eve
   On rippling Stream, or cloud-reflecting Lake.
   And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you,
   How oft! I bless the Lot that made me love you.
  
  
• 
  
• #70 Reply
  Posted by Clay Death on 02 Mar, 2015 18:43
• To a Young Lady
  
  
  
  by William Cowper
  
  
  
   Sweet stream that winds through yonder glade,
   Apt emblem of a virtuous maid
   Silent and chaste she steals along,
   Far from the world's gay busy throng:
   With gentle yet prevailing force,
   Intent upon her destined course;
   Graceful and useful all she does,
   Blessing and blest where'er she goes;
   Pure-bosom'd as that watery glass,
   And Heaven reflected in her face.
  
  
• 
  
• #71 Reply
  Posted by Clay Death on 02 Mar, 2015 18:45
• A Book of Verse
  
  
  
   A book of verse, underneath the bough,
   A jug of wine, a loaf of bread - and thou
   Beside me singing in the wilderness -
   Ah, wilderness were paradise now!
  
  - Omar Khayyam
  
• 
  
• #72 Reply
  Posted by Clay Death on 02 Mar, 2015 18:46
• A Valediction Forbidden Mourning
  
  
  
  by John Donne (1572-1631)
  
  
  
   As virtuous men pass mildly away,
   And whisper to their souls to go,
   Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
   "Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."
  
   So let us melt, and make no noise,
   No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
   'Twere profanation of our joys
   To tell the laity our love.
  
   Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;
   Men reckon what it did, and meant;
   But trepidation of the spheres,
   Though greater far, is innocent.
  
   Dull sublunary lovers' love
  —Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
   Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
   The thing which elemented it.
  
   But we by a love so much refined,
   That ourselves know not what it is,
   Inter-assurèd of the mind,
   Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.
  
   Our two souls therefore, which are one,
   Though I must go, endure not yet
   A breach, but an expansion,
   Like gold to aery thinness beat.
  
   If they be two, they are two so
   As stiff twin compasses are two;
   Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
   To move, but doth, if th' other do.
  
   And though it in the centre sit,
   Yet, when the other far doth roam,
   It leans, and hearkens after it,
   And grows erect, as that comes home.
  
   Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
   Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
   Thy firmness makes my circle just,
   And makes me end where I begun.
       
  
• 
  
• #73 Reply
  Posted by Clay Death on 02 Mar, 2015 18:47
• Farewell to Love
  
  
  
   by Michael Drayton (1563 - 1631)
  
  
  
   Since there's not help, come let us kiss and part;
   Nay, I am done, you get no more of me;
   And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
   That thus so cleanly I myself can free;
   Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
   And when we meet at any time again,
   Be it not seen in either of our brows
   That we, one jot of former love retain.
   Now, at the last gasp of love's latest breath,
   When his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,
   When faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
   And innocence is closing up his eyes,
   Now, if thou woulds't, when all have given him over,
   From death to life Thou might'st him yet recover.
  
       
  
• 
  
• #74 Reply
  Posted by Clay Death on 03 Mar, 2015 15:57
• Sonnets from the Portuguese XIV
  
  
  
   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 mayst love on, through love's eternity.
  
   -- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
•