Love Poems

You love me -- you are sure --
I shall not fear mistake --
I shall not cheated wake --
Some grinning morn --
To find the Sunrise left --
And Orchards -- unbereft --
And Dollie -- gone!

I need not start -- you're sure --
That night will never be --
When frightened -- home to Thee I run --
To find the windows dark --
And no more Dollie -- mark --
Quite none?

Be sure you're sure -- you know --
I'll bear it better now --
If you'll just tell me so --
Than when -- a little dull Balm grown --
Over this pain of mine --
You sting -- again!

Joy stayed with me a night -- 
Young and free and fair -- 
And in the morning light 
He left me there. 

Then Sorrow came to stay, 
And lay upon my breast 
He walked with me in the day. 
And knew me best. 

I'll never be a bride, 
Nor yet celibate, 
So I'm living now with Pride -- 
A cold bedmate. 

He must not hear nor see, 
Nor could he forgive 
That Sorrow still visits me 
Each day I live.

Sonnet #3, by William Shakespeare

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,
Now is the time that face should form another,
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb,
Of his self-love to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime,
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.
But if thou live remembered not to be,
Die single and thine image dies with thee.

Sonnet, by Robert Southey

With wayworn feet a Pilgrim woe-begone
  Life's upward road I journeyed many a day,
  And hymning many a sad yet soothing lay
Beguil'd my wandering with the charms of song.
  Lonely my heart and rugged was my way,
Yet often pluck'd I as I past along
  The wild and simple flowers of Poesy,
And as beseem'd the wayward Fancy's child
  Entwin'd each random weed that pleas'd mine eye.
Accept the wreath, BELOVED! it is wild
  And rudely garlanded; yet scorn not thou
The humble offering, where the sad rue weaves
'Mid gayer flowers its intermingled leaves,
  And I have twin'd the myrtle for thy brow.

Lucky White Girl is falling in Love, and sharing the experience. Take a look at her blog, she has a lot to say.

I am so in love with Sherman Alexie! Sherman_alexieDo you ever do that? Read something wonderful or see something wonderful and fall in love with the author? I saw Boyz N the Hood and fell in love with John Singleton. I read Barbara Kingsolver, Anne LaMott, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston (well, ok, so she’s dead, but still!...) I fall in love with all of them.

Meeting at Night, by Robert Browning (1812-1889)

      
The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

Members of my immediate family suffer from this same syndrome.

I am crazy. I know they say that really insane people never think of themselves as nuts, but I'm sure 'they' (whoever they are) can make an exception for me.

You see, after all the agonising and dithering, I am officially off romance books. Or trying to be off.

When I went home early last month, I brought back all those I had stored at home. Then I packed them all - ALL - in two boxes, and last week donated one box to the company's jumble sale. The other box is sitting in my house.

Did you see that? - It's sitting in my house.

For some reason the week after I did all this, I was tremendously busy and didn't even have time to think about romance books, let alone read them. And the week after that was OK too.

But the third week, which just happens to be last week, I lapsed. Instead of just picking the blasted box up, putting it in my car, and driving it to the office, I opened BOTH boxes, went through the books, and chose those I really wouldn't miss if I never saw them again. In the process, I discovered five books I'd rented from a store that has a "no time limit" return policy. And so I took them out of the box to return them and get my deposit back.

And then... yup, you guessed it. I read three of them.

To a Very Young Lady, by Sir George Etherege

Sweetest bud of beauty, may
    No untimely frost decay
    Th' early glories which we trace
    Blooming in thy matchless face:
    But kindly opening, like the rose,
    Fresh beauties every day disclose,
    Such as by Nature are not shown
    In all the blossoms she has blown:
    And then, what conquest shall you make,
   Who hearts already daily take!
   Scorch'd in the morning with thy beams,
   How shall we bear those sad extremes
   Which must attend thy threat'ning eyes
   When thou shalt to thy noon arise?

Here is a snippet of an anti-love poem entitled "Against Love Poems" by Pam Wagner. The whole poem is strangely moving. Click on the link to see the whole story.

Love is, if only, a word
twisted, double-tongued,
bladed to cut more than it cleaves,
an avowal of falsity and pomp,
of circumstance always changing,
like lies, rotting fruit,
an overblown cabbage rose.

PLS gives us a lengthy and positive review of Indian Love Poems, noting:

This delightful compendium of translations selected and edited by poet Meena Alexander for the Everyman’s Library Pocket Poet series is tiny, only 250 pages, but it’s an encyclopedia in disguise: nothing’s missing.

From the Economist, in response to an article on love science:

Shall I compare thee to a prairie vole?
Thou art more faithful and monogamous.
Rough winds may blast thee, stress may take its toll
And botox leave thy brow impervious;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines
And oft thy sun-cream UV rays lets through;
And every perfect pout at last declines
Into a wrinkled spouse's sulking moue.
But our strong love shall not its power lose
While opioids keep us on the straight and narrow
While oxytocin does its magic prove
And vasopressin binds us one to other.
   So long as men can keep their hormones potent
   They'll be romantic as that model rodent.

Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Day, by William Shakespeare, one of the most famous love poems.

Shall I compare thee to a Summers day?
Thou art more louely and more temperate:
Rough windes do shake the darling buds of Maie,
And Sommers lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heauen shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,
And euery faire from faire some-time declines,
By chance, or natures changing course vntrim'd:
But thy eternall Sommer shall not fade,
Nor loose possession of that faire thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wandr'st in his shade,
When in eternall lines to time thou grow'st,
   So long as men can breath or eyes can see,
   So long liues this, and this giues life to thee,

I like these tips. Sometimes I forget the simple things when I'm looking for that special someone.

There are millions of fish in the Internet sea, but to determine whether to reel them in, or simply cut bait, syl.com offers the following online dating advice.

If you are single and looking for someone, whether that is an email friend, a casual relationship or something serious, meeting people online can be very rewarding. Online dating web sites offer a fun, exciting and secure environment for interacting and meeting with other single people online. If you decide to take that all important step of meeting someone in real life, remember, common sense is by far your best safety tool.

These tips will help you navigate the online personals terrain safely, so that with just a few clicks of your mouse and some common sense tips, you’ll find exactly what you are looking for:

1. Stay positive and pace yourself

2. Photos are powerful

3. Demonstrate why you're unique

4. Meet people at your own pace

5. Close the deal

6. Safety first

Meeting

Dogs take new friends abruptly and by smell,
Cats' meetings are neat, tactual, caressive.
Monkeys exchange their fleas before they speak.
Snakes, no doubt, coil by coil reach mutual knowledge.

We then, at first encounter, should be silent;
Not court the cortex but the epidermis;
Not work from inside out but outside in;
Discover each other's flesh, its scent and texture;
Familiarize the sinews and the nerve-ends,
The hands, the hair - before the inept lips open.

Instead of which we are resonant, explicit.
Our words like windows intercept our meaning.
Our four eyes fence and flinch and awkwardly
Wince into shadow, slide oblique to ambush.
Hands stir, retract. The pulse is insulated.
Blood is turned inwards, lonely; skin unhappy ...
While always under all, but interrupted,
Antennae stretch ... waver ... and almost ... touch.

Jenny Brown

As I was walking by the shore,
I happened there to see,
A woman's form a-lyin' there,
As still as still could be.
The dress she wore was gingham blue,
Her hair all tumbled down;
She might have been my own true love,
My sweetheart Jenny Brown.

I approached the body with despair,
Saw her bruised and battered feet.
I pulled the seaweed from her hair,
Where the crabs had begun to eat.
I had treated her so cruelly,
Never the proper way.
When I saw her last she cried,
And then she ran away.

I waffed the flies and bugs,
Away from her swollen and bloated chest.
I breathed in very deeply,
And then I held my breath.
I thought that I could keep it down,
But oh was I so wrong.
I'm sorry but I barfed upon,
My sweetheart, Jenny Brown.

A sense of quiet came over the beach,
Her death was painless and fast,
It seems that I had lost her now;
My true love was gone at last.
Then, "Aha," she jumped up and said,
"I'll bet you thought I'd drowned."
What a rotten sense of humor,
Has my sweetheart Jenny Brown. 

Great advice on how to write a love letter. The first 4 steps are here. Click through for the rest.

Learning how to write a love letter isn't difficult. Once you gather your thoughts and follow these simple steps to express the way you feel in a love letter you'll know how to do it.

Difficulty: Average

Time Required: 1 hour Here's How:

1. Clear your desk and your mind of distractions. If you love someone enough to craft this letter, he or she deserves your full attention.

2. Place a picture of the one you love in front of you.

3. Put on your favorite music.

4. Take out your best letter writing stationery and pen.

Go, lovely rose--
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.

Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired:
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.

Then die!-- that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love--
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason, that long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre,
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angel, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me...
Yes!--that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we,
Of many far wiser than we--
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee,

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.