1247 Love poems

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day’s Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for right; I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death. Poetry Out Loud Note : In the print anthology, this poem is titled simply "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." The student may give either title during their recitation.

Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers Plucked in the garden, all the summer through And winter, and it seemed as if they grew In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers, So, in the like name of that love of ours, Take back these thoughts which here unfolded too, And which on warm and cold days I withdrew From my heart’s ground. Indeed, those beds and bowers Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue, And wait thy weeding; yet here’s eglantine, Here’s ivy!— take them, as I used to do Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine. Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true, And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.

I lift my heavy heart up solemnly, As once Electra her sepulchral urn, And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see What a great heap of grief lay hid in me, And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn Through the ashen greyness. If thy foot in scorn Could tread them out to darkness utterly, It might be well perhaps. But if instead Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow The grey dust up,... those laurels on thine head, O My beloved, will not shield thee so, That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred The hair beneath. Stand further off then! Go.

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life, I shall command The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand Serenely in the sunshine as before, Without the sense of that which I forbore, .. Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine With pulses that beat double. What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue God for myself, He hears that name of thine, And sees within my eyes, the tears of two.

The face of all the world is changed, I think, Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink, Was caught up into love, and taught the whole Of life in a new rhythm. The cup of dole God gave for baptism, I am fain to drink, And praise its sweetness, Sweet, with thee anear. The names of country, heaven, are changed away For where thou art or shalt be, there or here; And this ... this lute and song ... loved yesterday, (The singing angels know) are only dear, Because thy name moves right in what they say.

Soon, O Ianthe! life is o’er, And sooner beauty’s heavenly smile: Grant only (and I ask no more), Let love remain that little while.

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves, The brilliant moon and all the milky sky, And all that famous harmony of leaves, Had blotted out man's image and his cry. A girl arose that had red mournful lips And seemed the greatness of the world in tears, Doomed like Odysseus and the labouring ships And proud as Priam murdered with his peers; Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves, A climbing moon upon an empty sky, And all that lamentation of the leaves, Could but compose man's image and his cry.

The sorrow of true love is a great sorrow And true love parting blackens a bright morrow: Yet almost they equal joys, since their despair Is but hope blinded by its tears, and clear Above the storm the heavens wait to be seen. But greater sorrow from less love has been That can mistake lack of despair for hope And knows not tempest and the perfect scope Of summer, but a frozen drizzle perpetual Of drops that from remorse and pity fall And cannot ever shine in the sun or thaw, Removed eternally from the sun’s law.

(from Romeo and Juliet , spoken by Juliet) O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name. Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love And I’ll no longer be a Capulet. ‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy: Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s Montague? It is nor hand nor foot Nor arm nor face nor any other part Belonging to a man. O be some other name. What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, And for that name, which is no part of thee, Take all myself.

I run high in my body on the road toward sea. I fall in love. The things the wind is telling me. The yellow sky quiet in her quiet dress. Old birds sending news from the reddish hills. & the one hawk flying in the distance overhead. That hawk is what the wind says. In love with the heaving of my peacock chest, with my lungs, two wings, such flying things, but mine for now, just for now as I open my stride above the good, dirt road, fall in love with the mustard & coriander dust, & the far, far mountain beveled by light, by rain, the easy eye of the sun, now, smoke floating across the hillside like a face I knew once very well. Very well, I fall in love with the flowers & the wash hung like prayer flags, see, in red Juanita's yard. In love with the earth the color of earth. In love with the goats, their bellies & hooves, & the goat mouths bleating as they greet me on the road. I fall in love. How they wear their strange & double-eyes. How they do not blink or laugh at me or say a thing I understand when I ask them in my English, because they circle around my feet, as if they always knew me, Were you my children once? Did I know your names? Oh, little magics? Little children?