Poetry suggestions

[Eilonwy]

Hi
I need a poem about love by Friday. If you have any for me I would really appreciate your help.

Thank you :)

[Curufin]

Eilonwy, this really shouldn't be very hard to find.

Have you looked?

[Eilonwy]

Eilonwy, this really shouldn't be very hard to find.

Have you looked?

Oh yeah, I have some but I wanted to know your favourites. I thought it would be fun to start a thread on poetry.:)

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Well, you're never wrong with Shakespeare. ;)

One of my favorite speeches to give is this one by Helena in the the begining of Midsummer Night's Dream. She's complaining that her boy Demetrius is now hot for her bff Hermia.

How happy some o'er other some can be!
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;
He will not know what all but he do know:
And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes,
So I, admiring of his qualities:
Things base and vile, folding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind:
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgement taste;
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste:
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,
So the boy Love is perjured every where:
For ere Demetrius look'd on Hermia's eyne,
He hail'd down oaths that he was only mine;
And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt.
I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight:
Then to the wood will he to-morrow night
Pursue her; and for this intelligence
If I have thanks, it is a dear expense:
But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
To have his sight thither and back again.

[Mari]

I like this one. It is by Constance Fenimore Woolson, though she is more famous for her short stories and novels. I used it for one of my creative expressions once.

Love Unexpressed

The sweetest notes among the human heart-strings are dull with rust;
The sweetest chords, adjusted by the angels, are clogged with dust;
We pipe and pipe again our dreary music upon the self-same strains,
While sounds of crime, and fear, and desolation, come back in sad refrains.

On through the world we go, an army marching with listening ears,
Each longing, sighing, for the heavenly music he never hears;
Each longing, sighing, for a word of comfort, a word of tender praise,
A word of love, to cheer the endless journey of earth's hard, busy days.

They love us, and we know it; this suffices for reason's share.
Why should they pause to give that love expression with gentle care?
Why should they pause? But still our hearts are aching with all the gnawing pain
Of hungry love that longs to hear the music, and longs and longs in vain.

We love them, and they know it; if we falter, with fingers numb,
Among the unused strings of love's expression, the notes are dumb.
We shrink within ourselves in voiceless sorrow, leaving the words unsaid,
And, side by side with those we love the dearest, in silence on we tread.

Thus on we tread, and thus each heart in silence its fate fulfills,
Waiting and hoping for the heavenly music beyond the distant hills.
The only difference of the love in heaven from love on earth below is:
Here we love and know not how to tell it, and there we all shall know.


There is another one I like, by Edgar Alan Poe, but I only like the second, not really love-specific part ;) That one is called A Dream within a Dream

[Gwaimir Windgem]

A few by Wilde:

http://www.poetry-archive.com/w/la_bella_donna_della_mia_mente.html
[url]

Silentium Amoris


AS oftentimes the too resplendent sun
Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon
Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won
A single ballad from the nightingale,
So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail, 5
And all my sweetest singing out of tune.

And as at dawn across the level mead
On wings impetuous some wind will come,
And with its too harsh kisses break the reed
Which was its only instrument of song, 10
So my too stormy passions work me wrong,
And for excess of Love my Love is dumb.

But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show
Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung;
Else it were better we should part, and go, 15
Thou to some lips of sweeter melody,
And I to nurse the barren memory
Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung.

Quia Multum amavi


DEAR Heart I think the young impassioned priest
When first he takes from out the hidden shrine
His God imprisoned in the Eucharist,
And eats the bread, and drinks the dreadful wine,

Feels not such awful wonder as I felt 5
When first my smitten eyes beat full on thee,
And all night long before thy feet I knelt
Till thou wert wearied of Idolatry.

Ah! had’st thou liked me less and loved me more,
Through all those summer days of joy and rain, 10
I had not now been sorrow’s heritor,
Or stood a lackey in the House of Pain.

Yet, though remorse, youth’s white-faced seneschal
Tread on my heels with all his retinue,
I am most glad I loved thee—think of all 15
The suns that go to make one speedwell blue!

[inked]

From a long ago grade-school autograph book memory :

Love is a crazy thing!
It's something like a lizard.
It wraps its tail around your heart
And crawls into your gizzard!

Hummpf! Top that, Willy! :p