Aedh Tells of the Perfect Beauty

O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes,
The poets labouring all their days
To build a perfect beauty in rhyme
Are overthrown by a woman's gaze
And by the unlabouring brood of the skies:
And therefore my heart will bow, when dew
Is dropping sleep, until God burn time,
Before the unlabouring stars and you.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Epithalamium

Night, with all thine eyes look down!
Darkness shed its holiest dew!
When ever smiled the inconstant moon
On a pair so true?
Hence, coy hour! and quench thy light, _5
Lest eyes see their own delight!
Hence, swift hour! and thy loved flight
Oft renew.

BOYS:
O joy! O fear! what may be done
In the absence of the sun? _10
Come along!
The golden gates of sleep unbar!
When strength and beauty meet together,
Kindles their image like a star
In a sea of glassy weather. _15
Hence, coy hour! and quench thy light,
Lest eyes see their own delight!
Hence, swift hour! and thy loved flight
Oft renew.

GIRLS:
O joy! O fear! what may be done _20
In the absence of the sun?
Come along!
Fairies! sprites! and angels, keep her!
Holiest powers, permit no wrong!
And return, to wake the sleeper, _25
Dawn, ere it be long.
Hence, swift hour! and quench thy light,
Lest eyes see their own delight!
Hence, coy hour! and thy loved flight
Oft renew. _30

BOYS AND GIRLS:
O joy! O fear! what will be done
In the absence of the sun?
Come along!

P.B. Shelley

The Fugitives

1.
The waters are flashing,
The white hail is dashing,
The lightnings are glancing,
The hoar-spray is dancing--
Away! _5

The whirlwind is rolling,
The thunder is tolling,
The forest is swinging,
The minster bells ringing--
Come away! _10

The Earth is like Ocean,
Wreck-strewn and in motion:
Bird, beast, man and worm
Have crept out of the storm--
Come away! _15

2.
'Our boat has one sail
And the helmsman is pale;--
A bold pilot I trow,
Who should follow us now,'--
Shouted he-- _20

And she cried: 'Ply the oar!
Put off gaily from shore!'--
As she spoke, bolts of death
Mixed with hail, specked their path
O'er the sea. _25

And from isle, tower and rock,
The blue beacon-cloud broke,
And though dumb in the blast,
The red cannon flashed fast
From the lee. _30

3.
And 'Fear'st thou?' and 'Fear'st thou?'
And Seest thou?' and 'Hear'st thou?'
And 'Drive we not free
O'er the terrible sea,
I and thou?' _35

One boat-cloak did cover
The loved and the lover--
Their blood beats one measure,
They murmur proud pleasure
Soft and low;-- _40

While around the lashed Ocean,
Like mountains in motion,
Is withdrawn and uplifted,
Sunk, shattered and shifted
To and fro. _45

4.
In the court of the fortress
Beside the pale portress,
Like a bloodhound well beaten
The bridegroom stands, eaten
By shame; _50

On the topmost watch-turret,
As a death-boding spirit
Stands the gray tyrant father,
To his voice the mad weather
Seems tame; _55

And with curses as wild
As e'er clung to child,
He devotes to the blast,
The best, loveliest and last
Of his name!

P.B. Shelley

"I Love You"

When April bends above me
And finds me fast asleep,
Dust need not keep the secret
A live heart died to keep.

When April tells the thrushes,
The meadow-larks will know,
And pipe the three words lightly
To all the winds that blow.

Above his roof the swallows,
In notes like far-blown rain,
Will tell the little sparrow
Beside his window-pane.

O sparrow, little sparrow,
When I am fast asleep,
Then tell my love the secret
That I have died to keep.

Sara Teasdale

A Maiden

Oh if I were the velvet rose
Upon the red rose vine,
I'd climb to touch his window
And make his casement fine.

And if I were the little bird
That twitters on the tree,
All day I'd sing my love for him
Till he should harken me.

But since I am a maiden
I go with downcast eyes,
And he will never hear the songs
That he has turned to sighs.

And since I am a maiden
My love will never know
That I could kiss him with a mouth
More red than roses blow.

Sara Teasdale

Dew

I dream that he is mine,
I dream that he is true,
And all his words I keep
As rose-leaves hold the dew.

O little thirsty rose,
O little heart beware,
Lest you should hope to hold
A hundred roses' share.

Sara Teasdale

Tomb

Take away love and our earth is a tomb.

Robert Browning (1812-1889)

If you wish

If you wish to be loved, love.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Savage controversies

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

Bertrand Russell

Within the book and volume of my brain

And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter. Yes, by heaven!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Made for another world

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

Mirrors

Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.

Sydney Justin Harris (1917- )

Look around

Look around the habitable world, how few
Know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.

John Dryden

Trees

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)

Song to Harriet

Ah! sweet is the moonbeam that sleeps on yon fountain,
And sweet the mild rush of the soft-sighing breeze,
And sweet is the glimpse of yon dimly-seen mountain,
'Neath the verdant arcades of yon shadowy trees.

But sweeter than all was thy tone of affection, _5
Which scarce seemed to break on the stillness of eve,
Though the time it is past!--yet the dear recollection,
For aye in the heart of thy [Percy] must live.

Yet he hears thy dear voice in the summer winds sighing,
Mild accents of happiness lisp in his ear, _10
When the hope-winged moments athwart him are flying,
And he thinks of the friend to his bosom so dear.--

And thou dearest friend in his bosom for ever
Must reign unalloyed by the fast rolling year,
He loves thee, and dearest one never, Oh! never _15
Canst thou cease to be loved by a heart so sincere.

P.B. Shelley

Love´s Rose

1.
Hopes, that swell in youthful breasts,
Live not through the waste of time!
Love's rose a host of thorns invests;
Cold, ungenial is the clime,
Where its honours blow. _5
Youth says, 'The purple flowers are mine,'
Which die the while they glow.

2.
Dear the boon to Fancy given,
Retracted whilst it's granted:
Sweet the rose which lives in Heaven, _10
Although on earth 'tis planted,
Where its honours blow,
While by earth's slaves the leaves are riven
Which die the while they glow.

3.
Age cannot Love destroy, _15
But perfidy can blast the flower,
Even when in most unwary hour
It blooms in Fancy's bower.
Age cannot Love destroy,
But perfidy can rend the shrine _20
In which its vermeil splendours shine.

P.B. Shelley

Roundel

If he could know my songs are all for him,
At silver dawn or in the evening glow,
Would he not smile and think it but a whim,
If he could know?

Or would his heart rejoice and overflow,
As happy brooks that break their icy rim
When April's horns along the hillsides blow?

I may not speak till Eros' torch is dim,
The god is bitter and will have it so;
And yet to-night our fate would seem less grim
If he could know.

Sara Teasdale

Four Winds

"Four winds blowing thro' the sky,
You have seen poor maidens die,
Tell me then what I shall do
That my lover may be true."
Said the wind from out the south,
"Lay no kiss upon his mouth,"
And the wind from out the west,
"Wound the heart within his breast,"
And the wind from out the east,
"Send him empty from the feast,"
And the wind from out the north,
"In the tempest thrust him forth,
When thou art more cruel than he,
Then will Love be kind to thee."

Sara Teasdale

The Song for Colin

I sang a song at dusking time
Beneath the evening star,
And Terence left his latest rhyme
To answer from afar.

Pierrot laid down his lute to weep,
And sighed, "She sings for me,"
But Colin slept a careless sleep
Beneath an apple tree.

Sara Teasdale

The Blind

The birds are all a-building,
They say the world's a-flower,
And still I linger lonely
Within a barren bower.

I weave a web of fancies
Of tears and darkness spun.
How shall I sing of sunlight
Who never saw the sun?

I hear the pipes a-blowing,
But yet I may not dance,
I know that Love is passing,
I cannot catch his glance.

And if his voice should call me
And I with groping dim
Should reach his place of calling
And stretch my arms to him,

The wind would blow between my hands
For Joy that I shall miss,
The rain would fall upon my mouth
That his will never kiss.

Sara Teasdale

Original

The original is unfaithful to the translation.

Borges, Jorge Luis

Better

The shorter and the plainer the better

Beatrix Potter

Sneer

Will none wipe the sneer off the face of the cosmos?

Poul Anderson (1926-2001)

The heart of a man

The heart of a man's like that delicate weed
Which requires to be trampled on, boldly indeed
Ere it gives forth the fragrance you wish to
extract.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1831-1891)

Not a poet

I'm a freak user of words, not a poet.
That's really the truth.

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

We must

And we forget because we must and not because we will.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

Obedient

If the imagination were obedient, the appetites would give us very little trouble.

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

Wait

Everything comes if a man will only wait.

Tancred

A lady red upon the hill

A lady red upon the hill
Her annual secret keeps;
A lady white within the field
In placid lily sleeps!

The tidy breezes with their brooms
Sweep vale, and hill, and tree!
Prithee, my pretty housewives!
Who may expected be?

The neighbors do not yet suspect!
The woods exchange a smile --
Orchard, and buttercup, and bird --
In such a little while!

And yet how still the landscape stands,
How nonchalant the wood,
As if the resurrection
Were nothing very odd!



Emily Dickinson

Love Me

Brown-thrush singing all day long
In the leaves above me,
Take my love this little song,
"Love me, love me, love me!"

When he harkens what you say,
Bid him, lest he miss me,
Leave his work or leave his play,
And kiss me, kiss me, kiss me!

Sara Teasdale

The Shrine

There is no lord within my heart,
Left silent as an empty shrine
Where rose and myrtle intertwine,
Within a place apart.

No god is there of carven stone
To watch with still approving eyes
My thoughts like steady incense rise;
I dream and weep alone.

But if I keep my altar fair,
Some morning I shall lift my head
From roses deftly garlanded
To find the god is there.

Sara Teasdale

The Wayfarer

Love entered in my heart one day,
A sad, unwelcome guest;
But when he begged that he might stay,
I let him wait and rest.

He broke my sleep with sorrowing,
And shook my dreams with tears,
And when my heart was fain to sing,
He stilled its joy with fears.

But now that he has gone his way,
I miss the old sweet pain,
And sometimes in the night I pray
That he may come again.

Sara Teasdale

To Sophia

1.
Thou art fair, and few are fairer
Of the Nymphs of earth or ocean;
They are robes that fit the wearer--
Those soft limbs of thine, whose motion
Ever falls and shifts and glances _5
As the life within them dances.

2.
Thy deep eyes, a double Planet,
Gaze the wisest into madness
With soft clear fire,--the winds that fan it
Are those thoughts of tender gladness _10
Which, like zephyrs on the billow,
Make thy gentle soul their pillow.

3.
If, whatever face thou paintest
In those eyes, grows pale with pleasure,
If the fainting soul is faintest _15
When it hears thy harp's wild measure,
Wonder not that when thou speakest
Of the weak my heart is weakest.

4.
As dew beneath the wind of morning,
As the sea which whirlwinds waken, _20
As the birds at thunder's warning,
As aught mute yet deeply shaken,
As one who feels an unseen spirit
Is my heart when thine is near it.

P.B. Shelley

The Indian Serenade

1.
I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright:
I arise from dreams of thee, _5
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me--who knows how?
To thy chamber window, Sweet!

2.
The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream-- _10
The Champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart;--
As I must on thine, _15
Oh, beloved as thou art!

3.
Oh lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale. _20
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;--
Oh! press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last.

P.B. Shelley

To Harriet

Thy look of love has power to calm
The stormiest passion of my soul;
Thy gentle words are drops of balm
In life's too bitter bowl;
No grief is mine, but that alone _5
These choicest blessings I have known.

Harriet! if all who long to live
In the warm sunshine of thine eye,
That price beyond all pain must give,--
Beneath thy scorn to die; _10
Then hear thy chosen own too late
His heart most worthy of thy hate.

Be thou, then, one among mankind
Whose heart is harder not for state,
Thou only virtuous, gentle, kind, _15
Amid a world of hate;
And by a slight endurance seal
A fellow-being's lasting weal.

For pale with anguish is his cheek,
His breath comes fast, his eyes are dim, _20
Thy name is struggling ere he speak,
Weak is each trembling limb;
In mercy let him not endure
The misery of a fatal cure.

Oh, trust for once no erring guide! _25
Bid the remorseless feeling flee;
'Tis malice, 'tis revenge, 'tis pride,
'Tis anything but thee;
Oh, deign a nobler pride to prove,
And pity if thou canst not love. _30

P.B. Shelley

The bitterest part

In every kind of adversity, the bitterest part of a man's affliction is to remember that he once was happy.

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

So strange, so wonderful

So strange, so wonderful, so hard to think about. Well, strangeness was hard to think about. Wonder grazes you like a bullet; it zips by and is gone, and all you really perceive is the zing as it goes past, or maybe the pain if it comes too close. It does no good to search for whatever it was, for it never lodges anywhere you can get a good look at it. The truly strange has no hooks of familiarity that one can catch hold of.

Sheri S. Tepper, _The Fresco_ (2000)

A work of art

The only time a human being is free is when he or she makes a work of art.

Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805)

Mirror

With love you cannot bargain
there, the choice is not yours.
Love is a mirror, it reflects
only your essence,
if you have the courage
to look in its face.

Rumi

Lucky fools

Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

Wallow

It is one thing to learn about the past; it is another to wallow in it.

Auchincloss, Kenneth

Company

Company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of me.

Shakespeare, William

Write

Write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you are writing, and aren't writing particularly well

Agatha Christ

Still

Still I am learning.

Michelangelo

My Sweetest Lesbia

My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love,
And though the sager sort our deeds reprove,
Let us not weigh them. Heaven's great lamps do dive
Into their west, and straight again revive,
But soon as once set is our little light,
Then must we sleep one ever-during night.

If all would lead their lives in love like me,
Then bloody swords and armor should not be;
No drum nor trumpet peaceful sleeps should move,
Unless alarm came from the camp of love.
But fools do live, and waste their little light,
And seek with pain their ever-during night.

When timely death my life and fortune ends,
Let not my hearse be vexed with mourning friends,
But let all lovers, rich in triumph, come
And with sweet pastimes grace my happy tomb;
And Lesbia, close up thou my little light,
And crown with love my ever-during night.

Thomas Campion (1567-1620)

The Princess in the Tower

I

The Princess sings:

I am the princess up in the tower
And I dream the whole day thro'
Of a knight who shall come with a silver spear
And a waving plume of blue.

I am the princess up in the tower,
And I dream my dreams by day,
But sometimes I wake, and my eyes are wet,
When the dusk is deep and gray.

For the peasant lovers go by beneath,
I hear them laugh and kiss,
And I forget my day-dream knight,
And long for a love like this.


II

The Minstrel sings:

I lie beside the princess' tower,
So close she cannot see my face,
And watch her dreaming all day long,
And bending with a lily's grace.

Her cheeks are paler than the moon
That sails along a sunny sky,
And yet her silent mouth is red
Where tender words and kisses lie.

I am a minstrel with a harp,
For love of her my songs are sweet,
And yet I dare not lift the voice
That lies so far beneath her feet.


III

The Knight sings:

O princess cease your dreams awhile
And look adown your tower's gray side--
The princess gazes far away,
Nor hears nor heeds the words I cried.

Perchance my heart was overbold,
God made her dreams too pure to break,
She sees the angels in the air
Fly to and fro for Mary's sake.

Farewell, I mount and go my way,
--But oh her hair the sun sifts thro'--
The tilts and tourneys wait my spear,
I am the Knight of the Plume of Blue.

Sara Teasdale

When Love Goes

I

O mother, I am sick of love,
I cannot laugh nor lift my head,
My bitter dreams have broken me,
I would my love were dead.

"Drink of the draught I brew for thee,
Thou shalt have quiet in its stead."


II

Where is the silver in the rain,
Where is the music in the sea,
Where is the bird that sang all day
To break my heart with melody?

"The night thou badst Love fly away,
He hid them all from thee."

Sara Teasdale

Wild Asters

In the spring I asked the daisies
If his words were true,
And the clever little daisies
Always knew.

Now the fields are brown and barren,
Bitter autumn blows,
And of all the stupid asters
Not one knows.

Sara Teasdale

Nature

Nature cares nothing for logic, our human logic: she has her own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge until we are crushed under its wheel.

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883)

No love

No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)