CAMELOT FANTASIES

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.

     

A Valentine to My Wife


 by Eugene Field (1850-1895)



 Accept, dear girl, this little token,
 And if between the lines you seek,
 You'll find the love I've often spoken
 The love my dying lips shall speak.

 Our little ones are making merry
 O'er am'rous ditties rhymed in jest,
 But in these words (though awkward very)
 The genuine article's expressed.

 You are as fair and sweet and tender,
 Dear brown-eyed little sweetheart mine,
 As when, a callow youth and slender,
 I asked to be your Valentine.

 What though these years of ours be fleeting?
 What though the years of youth be flown?
 I'll mock old Tempus with repeating,
 "I love my love and her alone!"

 And when I fall before his reaping,
 And when my stuttering speech is dumb,
 Think not my love is dead or sleeping,
 But that it waits for you to come.

 So take, dear love, this little token,
 And if there speaks in any line
 The sentiment I'd fain have spoken,
 Say, will you kiss your Valentine?     
     

Beautiful Dreamer


 Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,
 Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee;
 Sounds of the rude world heard in the day,
 Lull'd by the moonlight have all pass'd a way!

 Beautiful dreamer, queen of my song,
 List while I woo thee with soft melody;
 Gone are the cares of life's busy throng, --
 Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!

 Beautiful dreamer, out on the sea
 Mermaids are chaunting the wild lorelie;
 Over the streamlet vapors are borne,
 Waiting to fade at the bright coming morn.

 Beautiful dreamer, beam on my heart,
 E'en as the morn on the streamlet and sea;
 Then will all clouds of sorrow depart, --
 Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!

 - by Stephen Foster

Jenny Kissed Me


 Jenny kissed 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 missed me,
 Say I'm growing old, but add,
 Jenny kissed me.

 - by Leigh Hunt

On the Balcony



 by D.H. Lawrence



 In front of the sombre mountains,
 a faint, lost ribbon of rainbow
 And between us and it, the thunder;
 And down below in the green wheat,
 the labourers stand like dark stumps,
 still in the green wheat.
 You are near to me, and naked feet
 In their sandals, and through the
 scent of the balcony's naked timber
 I distinguish the scent of your hair:
 so now the limber
 Lightning falls from heaven.
 Adown the pale-green glacier river floats
 A dark boat through the gloom—
and whither? The thunder roars
 But still we have each other!
 The naked lightnings in the heavens dither
 And disappear—
what have we but each other?
 The boat has gone.
   

A Dream Within a Dream



 Take this kiss upon the brow!
 And, in parting from you now,
 Thus much let me avow-
 You are not wrong, who deem
 That my days have been a dream;
 Yet, if Hope has flown away
 In a night, or in a day,
 In a vision, or in none,
 Is it, therefore, the less gone?
 All that we see or seem
 Is but a dream within a dream.

 I stand amid the roar
 Of a surf-tormented shore,
 And I hold within my hand
 Grains of golden sand-
 How few! yet how they creep
 Through my fingers to the deep,
 While I weep- while I weep!
 O God! can I not grasp
 Them with a tighter clasp?
 O God! can I not save
 One from the pitiless wave?
 Is all that we see or seem
 But a dream within a dream?

 - by Edgar Allen Poe

Clenched Soul


Pablo Neruda


We have lost even this twilight.
 No one saw us this evening hand in hand
 while the blue night dropped on the world.

 I have seen from my window
 the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

 Sometimes a piece of sun
 burned like a coin in my hand.

 I remembered you with my soul clenched
 in that sadness of mine that you know.

 Where were you then?
 Who else was there?
 Saying what?
 Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
 when I am sad and feel you are far away?

 The book fell that always closed at twilight
 and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

 Always, always you recede through the evenings
 toward the twilight erasing statues.