In celebration of April being the National Month, I'm bringing back Transcending Time in which I share some of my favorite poems from decades ago. I always find myself lurking in the spaces between bookshelves in the library to go back to these and be alone with words for a moment. They hold a special place in my heart and I could only hope to write like these poets do. One day. One day.
Here's the first one. Enjoy reading my darlings. I love all these but the last one's my favorite! Wink wink
The Night Has a Thousand Eyes
Francis William Bourdillon
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
My Kate
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
She was not as pretty as women I know,
And yet all your best made of sunshine and snow
Drop to shade, melt to naught in the long-trodden ways,
While she ’s still remember’d on warm and cold days—
My Kate.
Her air had a meaning, her movements a grace;
You turn’d from the fairest to gaze on her face:
And when you had once seen her forehead and mouth,
You saw as distinctly her soul and her truth—
My Kate.
Such a blue inner light from her eyelids outbroke,
You look’d at her silence and fancied she spoke:
When she did, so peculiar yet soft was the tone,
Tho’ the loudest spoke also, you heard her alone—
My Kate.
I doubt if she said to you much that could act
As a thought or suggestion: she did not attract
In the sense of the brilliant or wise: I infer
’Twas her thinking of others, made you think of her—
My Kate.
She never found fault with you, never implied
Your wrong by her right; and yet men at her side
Grew nobler, girls purer, as thro’ the whole town
The children were gladder that pull’d at her gown—
My Kate.
None knelt at her feet confess’d lovers in thrall;
They knelt more to God than they used,—that was all:
If you praised her as charming, some ask’d what you meant,
But the charm of her presence was felt when she went—
My Kate.
The weak and the gentle, the ribald and rude,
She took as she found them, and did them all good;
It always was so with her—see what you have!
She has made the grass greener even here … with her grave—
My Kate.
My dear one!—when thou wast alive with the rest,
I held thee the sweetest and loved thee the best:
And now thou art dead, shall I not take thy part
As thy smiles used to do for thyself, my sweet Heart—
My Kate
Love Is A Sickness Full of Woes
Samuel Daniel
Love is a sickness full of woes,
All remedies refusing;
A plant that with most cutting grows,
Most barren with best using.
Why so?
More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoyed, it sighting cries,
Heigh ho!
Love is a torment of the mind,
A tempest everlasting;
And Jove hath made it of a kind
Not well, not full, nor fasting.
Why so?
More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoyed, it sighing cries,
Heigh ho!
Love (III)
George Herbert
Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
Soliloquy of the Solipsist
Sylvia Plath
I?
I walk alone;
The midnight street
Spins itself from under my feet;
When my eyes shut
These dreaming houses all snuff out;
Through a whim of mine
Over gables the moon’s celestial onion
Hangs high.
I
Make houses shrink
And trees diminish
By going far; my look’s leash
Dangles the puppet-people
Who, unaware how they dwindle,
Laugh, kiss, get drunk,
Nor guess that if I choose to blink
They die.
I
When in good humor,
Give grass its green
Blazon sky blue, and endow the sun
With gold;
Yet, in my wintriest moods, I hold
Absolute power.
To boycott color and forbid any flower
To be.
I
Know you appear
Vivid at my side,
Denying you sprang out of my head,
Claiming you feel
Love fiery enough to prove flesh real,
Though it’s quite clear
All your beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear,
From me.
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