Joined: Oct 2008 Posts: 625
Thanks: 42 Thanked: 69 times in 54 posts
Gender:
Love Poems
After reading the topic 'Love' in the philosophy section I thought we could use a thread devoted to the many faces of love. Poetry and love, they go together. No matter how conflicting, how diverse, no other single subject has such a passionate mountain of writing.
Here is the first:
Symtoms of Love by Robert Graves
Love is a universal migraine,
A bright stain on the vision
Blotting out reason.
Symptoms of true love
Are leaness, jealousy,
Laggard dawns;
Are omens and nightmares --
Listening for a knock,
Waiting for a sign:
For a touch of her fingers
In a darkened room,
For a searching look.
Take courage, lover!
Can you endure such grief
At any hand but hers?
Joined: Jan 2008 Posts: 3712 Location: Berryville, Virginia
Thanks: 629 Thanked: 501 times in 403 posts
Gender: Country:
Bravo, good thread. I'm glad you're doing this before Valentines Day, when I feel forced by commercialism to declare love. I like your Graves poem on the "terror" of love. My love poem guy is W.B. Yeats. He had a long, unrequited love going on that fueled a number of good poems. This is not one about Maud Gonne, more a traditional treatment, but I like it and have posted it before.
BROWN PENNY
I whispered, 'I am too young,'
And then, 'I am old enough';
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
'Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.'
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.
O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.
Joined: Oct 2008 Posts: 701
Thanks: 53 Thanked: 115 times in 93 posts
Gender:
Yes, good idea starting this thread. I had thought the philosophy discussion about love needed some poetry but somehow the atmosphere over there just seemed too cut and dried. I like ee cummings because his poems push plain old logic and reason and sentence structure to the side in favor of love and i really like his imagery. This poem is actually more logical than others but i like it anyway.
your little voice
your little voice
Over the wires came leaping
and i felt suddenly
dizzy
With the jostling and shouting of merry flowers
wee skipping high-heeled flames
courtesied before my eyes
or twinkling over to my side
Looked up
with impertinently exquisite faces
floating hands were laid upon me
I was whirled and tossed into delicious dancing
up
Up
with the pale important
stars and the Humorous
moon
dear girl
How i was crazy how i cried when i heard
over time
and tide and death
leaping
Sweetly
your voice
Joined: Jan 2008 Posts: 3712 Location: Berryville, Virginia
Thanks: 629 Thanked: 501 times in 403 posts
Gender: Country:
Thanks for that e.e. cummings. Here's one I happened on by Robert Herrick (of "gather ye rosebuds while ye may" fame). It has some surprising vocabulary.
UPON JULIA'S CLOTHES
Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free,
O how that glitteriing taketh me!
Joined: Apr 2008 Posts: 2495 Images: 5 Location: Round Hill, VA
Thanks: 221 Thanked: 175 times in 141 posts
Gender: Country:
Here's a favorite love poem of mine --
It's all I have to bring today (26)
by Emily Dickinson
It's all I have to bring today
_________________ Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads ~ Henry David Thoreau
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” -Thich Nhat Hahn
Joined: Apr 2008 Posts: 2495 Images: 5 Location: Round Hill, VA
Thanks: 221 Thanked: 175 times in 141 posts
Gender: Country:
DWill wrote:
Did someone post a poem called, I think, "Delight in Disorder"? The Ben Jonson reminded me of it, and it was just recently, but I can't place it.
Nope, I checked. I've never read this one before. So, here it is and it seems it may be a poem that was in response to another. I will check that out too.
DELIGHT IN DISORDER.
by Robert Herrick
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
Enthrals the crimson stomacher :
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbons 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.
_________________ Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads ~ Henry David Thoreau
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” -Thich Nhat Hahn
Last edited by Saffron on Mon Jan 12, 2009 10:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Joined: Apr 2008 Posts: 2495 Images: 5 Location: Round Hill, VA
Thanks: 221 Thanked: 175 times in 141 posts
Gender: Country:
Saffron wrote:
DWill wrote:
Did someone post a poem called, I think, "Delight in Disorder"? The Ben Jonson reminded me of it, and it was just recently, but I can't place it.
Nope, I checked. I've never read this one before. So, here it is and it seems it may be a poem that was in response to another. I will check that out too.
Well, sill me. It seems that the Ben Johnson and Robert Herrick poems are often paired together. Every Google hit for one poem lead to the other. I also found the following -- which technically doesn't belong on a thread for poems about love. It does however explaining something of the poem, "Delight in Disorder".
DWill, did you already know about the connection?
His Prayer to Ben Jonson
by Robert Herrick
(1591-1674)
When I a verse shall make,
Know I have pray'd thee,
For old religion's sake,
Saint Ben to aid me.
Make the way smooth for me,
When I, thy Herrick,
Honouring thee, on my knee
Offer my lyric.
Candles I'll give to thee,
And a new altar,
And thou, Saint Ben, shalt be
Writ in my psalter.
_________________ Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads ~ Henry David Thoreau
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” -Thich Nhat Hahn
Joined: Jan 2008 Posts: 3712 Location: Berryville, Virginia
Thanks: 629 Thanked: 501 times in 403 posts
Gender: Country:
No, I didn't know about the Herrick-Jonson connection, Saffron. I can imagine Bob and Ben sitting in the Queen's Arms Tavern betting each other which one can write the better poem on this theme. It could be that "delight in disorder" was a conventional idea that poets played with. And maybe originality did not have such a high premium placed on it. What is it they say about Shakespeare?-- he is the most quoted writer because he used the most quotes.
Joined: Apr 2008 Posts: 2495 Images: 5 Location: Round Hill, VA
Thanks: 221 Thanked: 175 times in 141 posts
Gender: Country:
DWill wrote:
It could be that "delight in disorder" was a conventional idea that poets played with. And maybe originality did not have such a high premium placed on it. What is it they say about Shakespeare?-- he is the most quoted writer because he used the most quotes.
You are so clever! The following is copied from eNotes.com --
Much poetry of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries incorporates the idea of a "slight disorder in the dress" as well as in the hair of its female subjects.
_________________ Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads ~ Henry David Thoreau
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” -Thich Nhat Hahn
Joined: Jan 2008 Posts: 3712 Location: Berryville, Virginia
Thanks: 629 Thanked: 501 times in 403 posts
Gender: Country:
Well, this one begins and ends with "love." It was used by an old friend at her wedding. I can't think of too many love poems by Frost (that is, of a person for a person).
Two Look At Two
Robert Frost
Love and forgetting might have carried them
A little further up the mountain side
With night so near, but not much further up.
They must have halted soon in any case
With thoughts of a path back, how rough it was
With rock and washout, and unsafe in darkness;
When they were halted by a tumbled wall
With barbed-wire binding. They stood facing this,
Spending what onward impulse they still had
In One last look the way they must not go,
On up the failing path, where, if a stone
Or earthslide moved at night, it moved itself;
No footstep moved it. 'This is all,' they sighed,
Good-night to woods.' But not so; there was more.
A doe from round a spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall, as near the wall as they.
She saw them in their field, they her in hers.
The difficulty of seeing what stood still,
Like some up-ended boulder split in two,
Was in her clouded eyes; they saw no fear there.
She seemed to think that two thus they were safe.
Then, as if they were something that, though strange,
She could not trouble her mind with too long,
She sighed and passed unscared along the wall.
'This, then, is all. What more is there to ask?'
But no, not yet. A snort to bid them wait.
A buck from round the spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall as near the wall as they.
This was an antlered buck of lusty nostril,
Not the same doe come back into her place.
He viewed them quizzically with jerks of head,
As if to ask, 'Why don't you make some motion?
Or give some sign of life? Because you can't.
I doubt if you're as living as you look."
Thus till he had them almost feeling dared
To stretch a proffering hand
Joined: Oct 2008 Posts: 625
Thanks: 42 Thanked: 69 times in 54 posts
Gender:
Another one by Robert Graves. I wonder if he had a troubled love life?
Never Such Love
Twined together and, as is customary,
For words of rapture groping, they
'Never such love,' swore, 'ever before was!'
Contrast with all loves that had failed or staled
Registered their own as love indeed
And was this not to blab idly
The heart's fated inconstancy?
Better in love to seal the love-sure lips,
For truly love was before words were,
And no word given, no word broken.
When the name 'love' is uttered
(Love, the near-honourable malady
With which in greed and haste they
Each other do infect and curse)
Or, worse, is written down....
Wise after the event, by love withered,
A 'never more!' most frantically
Sorrow and shame would proclaim
Such as, they'd swear, never before were:
True lovers even in this.
Joined: Oct 2008 Posts: 625
Thanks: 42 Thanked: 69 times in 54 posts
Gender:
I did a little reading on Robert Graves, and yes, sounds like he went through some stormy times. Married young, four children, then left his wife for another woman, which included a suicide attempt by the other woman, she eventually left him years later, and shortly after he started a relationship with the wife of a friend whom he eventually married had another family with, and spent the rest of his life with (true love at last or just got tired of looking?). Lots of ups and downs to write poetry about. Here is one more that I liked:
Counting the Beats
You, love, and I,
(He whispers) you and I,
And if no more than only you and I
What care you or I ?
Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.
Cloudless day,
Night, and a cloudless day,
Yet the huge storm will burst upon their heads one day
From a bitter sky.
Where shall we be,
(She whispers) where shall we be,
When death strikes home, O where then shall we be
Who were you and I ?
Not there but here,
(He whispers) only here,
As we are, here, together, now and here,
Always you and I.
Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.
Joined: Apr 2008 Posts: 2495 Images: 5 Location: Round Hill, VA
Thanks: 221 Thanked: 175 times in 141 posts
Gender: Country:
DWill, here is another Frost poem of love. I rather like the idea expressed - come be my love in the rain.
A Line-storm Song
by Robert Frost
The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift,
The road is forlorn all day,
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,
And the hoof-prints vanish away.
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
Expend their bloom in vain.
Come over the hills and far with me,
And be my love in the rain.
The birds have less to say for themselves
In the wood-world's torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves,
Although they are no less there:
All song of the woods is crushed like some
Wild, easily shattered rose.
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
Where the boughs rain when it blows.
There is the gale to urge behind
And bruit our singing down,
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind
From which to gather your gown.
What matter if we go clear to the west,
And come not through dry-shod?
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast
The rain-fresh goldenrod.
Oh, never this whelming east wind swells
But it seems like the sea's return
To the ancient lands where it left the shells
Before the age of the fern;
And it seems like the time when after doubt
Our love came back amain.
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
And be my love in the rain.
_________________ Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads ~ Henry David Thoreau
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” -Thich Nhat Hahn
Joined: Oct 2008 Posts: 701
Thanks: 53 Thanked: 115 times in 93 posts
Gender:
Saffron
Quote:
here is another Frost poem of love. I rather like the idea expressed - come be my love in the rain
I rather like it too. I think Frost captures the excitement, romance and eroticism of love in the rain very well. And I think it speaks to love under conditions of adversity as well.
realiz
Quote:
I did a little reading on Robert Graves, and yes, sounds like he went through some stormy times.
He certainly did and I'm sure his love life provided plenty of grist for his poetry mill. Sounds like he had his share of "rain" and that was probably a good thing, at least it gave him something to write about.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot post attachments in this forum
The 12th Disciple is now being
stocked at Poor Richard's
Bookstore in Colorado Springs.
We're happy to have the
title at such a historic
location in Colorado Springs.
If… more
For most of us, a very big
part of our lives will be a
dark place, we wont realize
it. We live, we eat, we have
some fun, we go to school, we
sleep. But it will come the
time, when… more
The 12th Disciple's
endorsement for a Presidential
Candidate...we'll pass.
If many haven't learned
over the past several decades,
centuries, and millennia, the
gover… more
So I've been looking for
new books to read, but I
haven't found any that
have caught my attention
lately. I want to try and
venture out into a different
genre, but I'… more
For those who constantly gripe
about jobs being sent
overseas, focus your anger on
this. Read about how one of
the most profitable companies
prided by American citizens
offshores t… more
Its January 1945 and British,
Commonwealth, US and POWs from
various other nationalities
are finally awaiting
liberation from the various
camps in Eastern Europe, where
some of the… more
A good friend of mine recently
received a pre-paid credit
card. She went to pay for a
$20.00 gas purchase only to
later find out that over a
$70.00 hold was placed on her
card for… more
While watching the bube tube
(TV) this morning I stumbled
on a motivational speaker
saying today marks a new
year, you now have a blank
canvas to work from.
The 12th Disciple wishes you
and yours a Happy New Year.
Many of us hope and pray that
2012 will bring better
leadership in the government
of the United States, better
leadership i… more
The Cat & The
Nightingale Saga, the docu
drama version of The Weekend
Trippers, also tells Rifleman
Ted Taylors story but in a
slightly different way. It too
tells of the… more
In 2011 I published my book;
in the book I outlined 9 Key
Principles to Prosperity
(happiness). Like
many of you, I walked through
2011 with the Woe is me
attitude. When… more
More and more these days I see
people using social media to
quote what someone else has
said. I see people posting
their favorite rappers lyrics,
lines from movies and what
seems t… more
Im down the school for the
first time today. My friend
visited two weeks ago and said
it was chaos. They must have
heard I was back
because everything is tidy and
orderly today… more
I'm quite positive that
everyone who enters this site
has the same thing in mind:
fear of seeing a world without
books, without literature. We
see it everyday, more people
qui… more
For once in my life I step off
the plane at Banjul, and
dont get a rush of elation.
I went home to see my
daughters twins safely
delivered. They are all well
now, but Im goin… more
Last weekend I witnessed a
couple of family members
literally fall apart at the
seams because of a problem
with a couple of their
employees. They recently
opened a group home, and
… more
Tell your friends when to meet you in the BookTalk.org Chat Room.
Booktalk.org on Facebook
If you enjoy business bestsellers and would like to expand your business knowledge check out the quality book summaries offered by the world's leading book summary company.
BookTalk.org is a free book discussion group or online reading group or book club. We read and talk about both fiction and non-fiction books as a group. We host live author chats where booktalk members can interact with and interview authors. We give away free books to our members in book giveaway contests. Our booktalks are open to everybody who enjoys talking about books. Our book forums include book reviews, author interviews and book resources for readers and book lovers. Discussing books is our passion. We're a literature forum, or reading forum. Register a free book club account today! Suggest nonfiction and fiction books. Authors and publishers are welcome to advertise their books or ask for an author chat or author interview.
Tweet This Topic
