Sweet Peril by George MacDonald

                   Sweet Peril

Alas, how easily things go wrong!
A sigh too much, or a kiss too long,
And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again. 

Alas, how hardly things go right!
‘Tis hard to watch in a summer night,
For the sigh will come, and the kiss will stay,
And the summer night is a wintry day. 

And yet how easily things go right,
If the sigh and a kiss of a summer’s night
Come deep from the soul in the stronger ray
That is born in the light of the winter’s day.

And things can never go badly wrong
If the heart is true and the love be strong,
For the mist, if it comes, and the weeping rain
Will be changed by the love into sunshine again.

Read Full Post »

Portrait Of Young Love by Stephen Vincent Benet

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

              Portrait Of Young Love

If you were with me – as you’re not, of course,
I’d taste the elegant tortures of Despair
With a slow, languid, long-refining tongue;
Puzzle for days on one particular stare,
Or if you knew a word’s peculiar force,
Or what you looked like when you were quite young. 

You’d lift me heaven-high – till a word, grated.
Dash me hell-deep – oh that luxurious Pit,
Fatly and well encushioned with self-pity,
Where Love’s an epicure not quickly sated!
What mournful musics wander over it,
Faint-blown from some long-lost celestial city!

Such bitter joyousness I’d have, and action,
Were you here – be no more the fool who broods
On true Adventure till he wakes her scorning –
But we’re too petty for such noble warning.
And I find just as perfect satisfaction
In analyzing these, and other moods!

Read Full Post »

The Throstle by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

The Throstle

“Summer is coming, summer is coming.
   I know it, I know it, I know it.
Light again, leaf again, life again, love again,”
   Yes, my wild little Poet. 

Sing the new year in under the blue.
   Last year you sang it as gladly.
“New, new, new, new!”  Is it then so new
   That you should carol so madly? 

“Love again, song again, nest again, young again.
   Never a prophet so crazy!
And hardly a daisy as yet, little friend,
   See, there is hardly a daisy. 

“Here again, here, here, here, happy year!”
   O warble unchidden, unbidden!
Summer is coming, is coming my dear,
   And all the winters are hidden.

Read Full Post »

Sonnet XXIII by William Shakespeare

                     Sonnet XXIII

As an unperfect actor on the stage
Who with his fear is put besides his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart;
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love’s rite,
And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,
O’ercharg’d with burthen of mine own love’s might.
O, let my looks be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hat more express’d.
   O, learn to read what silent love hath writ!
   To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.

 

Read Full Post »

The Song Of The Brook by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Song Of The Brook

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
   I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
   To bicker down a valley. 

By thirty hills I hurry down,
   Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
   And half a hundred bridges. 

Till last by Philip’s farm I flow
   To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go
   But I go on for ever. 

I chatter over stony ways,
   In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
   I babble on the pebbles. 

With many a curve my banks I fret
   By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
   With willow-weed and mallow. 

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
   To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go
   But I go on for ever. 

I wind about, and in and out,
   With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
   And here and there a grayling. 

And here and there a foamy flake
   Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery waterbreak
   Above the golden gravel. 

And drawn them all along, and flow
   To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go
   But I go on for ever. 

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
   I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
   That grow for happy lovers. 

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
   Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
   Against my sandy shallows. 

I murmur under moon and stars
   In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
   I loiter round my cresses; 

And out again I curve and flow
   To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go
   But I go on for ever.

——————————————-

photo by Mirna Sentic at http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/mA3vi4y/forest+stream

Read Full Post »

I’d Rather Be by Emily Dickinson

        I”d Rather Be

I would not paint – a picture –
I’d rather be the One
Its bright impossibility
To dwell – delicious – on
And wonder how the fingers feel
Whose rare- celestial – stir –
Evokes so sweet a Torment –
Such sumptuous – Despair – 

I would not talk, like Cornets –
I’d rather be the One
Raised softly to the Ceilings –
And out, and easy on –
Through Villages of Ether –
Myself endued Balloon
By but a lip of Metal –
The pier to my Pontoon – 

Nor would I be a Poet –
It’s finer – own the Ear –
Enamored – impotent – content –
The License to revere,
A privilege so awful
What would the Dower be,
Had I the Art to stun myself
With Bolts of Melody!

Read Full Post »

Cotton Mather by Stephen Vincent Benet

Cotton Mather (Feb. 12, 1663 – Feb. 13, 1728), (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cotton Mather

Grim Cotton Mather
Was always seeing witches,
Daylight, moonlight,
They buzzed about his head,
Pinching him and plaguing him
With aches and pains and stitches,
Witches in his pulpit,
Witches by his bed. 

Nowadays, nowadays,
We’d say that he was crazy,
But everyone believed him
In old Salem town
And nineteen people
Were hanged for Salem witches
Because of Cotton Mather
And his long, black gown. 

Old Cotton Mather
Didn’t die happy.
He could preach and thunder,
He could fast and pray,
But men began to wonder
If there had been witches –
When he walked in the streets
Men looked the other way.

Read Full Post »

Delight In Disorder by Robert Herrick

    Delight In Disorder

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction:
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthralls the crimson stomacher:
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbands to flow confusedly:
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat:
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.

Read Full Post »

A Song by Percy Bysshe Shelley

                A Song

I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden;
Thou needest not fear mine;
My spirit is too deeply laden
Ever to burden thine. 

I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion;
Thou needest not fear mine;
Innocent is the heart’s devotion
With which I worship thine.

Read Full Post »

Bright Star! Would I Were Steadfast by John Keats

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art –
Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite.
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors: -
No – yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair Love’s ripening breast
To feel forever its soft fall and swell,
Awake forever in a sweet unrest;
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever, – or else swoon to death.

Read Full Post »