LANGUAGE of the HEART

Shall I Compare Thee

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May;
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance of nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
-- William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

A White Rose

The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
Oh, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.

But I send you a cream-white rosebud,
With a flush on it's petal tips;
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips.
-- John Boyle O'Reilly (1844-1890)

dedicated to to FMC, with all my love

A Dream Within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And,in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong, who deem:
That my days have been a dream:
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
--Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

Desire

Where true Love burns Desire is Love's pure flame;
It is the reflex of our earthly frame,
That takes its meaning from the nobler part,
And but translates the language of the heart.
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

After Parting

Oh I have sown my love so wide
That he will find is everywhere;
It will awake him in the night,
I will enfold him in the air.

I set my shadow in his sight
And I have winged it with desire,
That it may be a cloud by day
And in the night a shaft of fire.
--Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

How Do I Love Thee?

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 candlelight.
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.
--Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

My Star

All that I know
Of a certain star,
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue,
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue!

Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled:
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.
--Robert Browning (1812-1889)

Music, When Soft Voices Die

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory--
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
--Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

On a Fair Morning As I Came By the Way

On a fair morning, as I came by the way,
Met I with a merry maid in the merry month of May,
When a sweet love sings his lovely lay,
And every bird upon the bush bechirps it up so gay.
With a heave and ho! with a heave and ho!
Thy wife shall be thy master, I trow.
Sing care away, care away, let the world go!
Hey, lustily, all in a row, all in a row, Sing care away, care away, let the world go!
--Thomas Morley (1557-1602)

The Kiss

Before you kissed me only winds of heaven
had kissed me, and the tenderness of rain--
Now you have come, how can I care for kisses
Like theirs again?

I sought the sea, she sent her winds to meet me,
They surged about me singing of the south--
I turned my head away to keep still holy
Your kiss upon my mouth.

And swift sweet rains of shining April weather
Found not my lips where living kisses are;
I bowed my head lest they put out my glory
As rain puts out a star.

I am my love's and he is mine forever,
Sealed with a seal and safe forevermore--
Think you that I could let a beggar enter
Where a king stood before>
--Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

for my love, FMC, with all my heart

Wedding Prayer

Now you will feel no rain,
For each of you will be shelter to the other.
Now you will feel no cold,
For each of you will be warmth to the other.
Now there is no more loneliness, For each of you will be companion to the other.
Now you are two bodies,
But there is only one life before you.
Go now to your dwelling place
To enter into the days of your togetherness
And may your days be good and long upon the earth.
--Traditional Apache Prayer

I Hid My Love

I hid my love when young till I
Couldn't bear the buzzng of a fly;
I hid my love to my despite
Till I could not bear to look at light:
I dare not gaze upon her face
But left her memory in each place;
Where'er I saw a wild flower lie
I kissed and bade my love good-bye.

I met her in the greenest dells,
Where dewdrops pearl the wood bluebells;
The lost breeze kissed her bright blue eye,
The bee kissed and went singing by;
A sunbeam found a passage there,
A gold chain round her neck so fair;
As secret as the wild bee's song
She lay there all the summer long.

I hid my love in field and town
Till e'en the breeze would knock me down;
The bees seemed singing ballads o'er,
The fly's bass turned a lion's roar;
And even silence found a tounge,
To haunt me all the summer long;
The riddle nature could not prove
Was nothing else but secret love.
--John Clare (1793-1864)

The Wine of Love

The wine of Love is music,
And the feast of Love is song:
And when Love sits down to the banquet,
Love sits long:

Sits long and ariseth drunken,
But not with the feast and the wine;
He reeleth with his own heart,
That great rich Vine.
--James Thomson (1834-1882)

The Look

Strephon kissed me in the spring,
Robin in he fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.

Strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
Robin's lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin's eyes
Haunts me night and day.
--Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

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A dream is like a river, ever changing as it flows;
And the dreamer just a vessel that must follow where it goes.
-- Garth Brooks

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