Category Archives: love

Tie Your Heart at Night to Mine

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Tie your heart at night to mine, love,
and both will defeat the darkness
like twin drums beating in the forest
against the heavy wall of wet leaves.

Night crossing: black coal of dream
that cuts the thread of earthly orbs
with the punctuality of a headlong train
that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.

Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement,
to the grip on life that beats in your breast,
with the wings of a submerged swan,

So that our dream might reply
to the sky’s questioning stars
with one key, one door closed to shadow.

By: Pablo Neruda

I Love You

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When April bends above me
And finds me fast asleep,
Dust need not keep the secret
A live heart died to keep.

When April tells the thrushes,
The meadow-larks will know,
And pipe the three words lightly
To all the winds that blow.

Above his roof the swallows,
In notes like far-blown rain,
Will tell the little sparrow
Beside his window-pane.

O sparrow, little sparrow,
When I am fast asleep,
Then tell my love the secret
That I have died to keep.

by Sara Teasdale

I Cannot Live Without You

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I CANNOT live with you,
It would be life,
And life is over there
Behind the shelf

The sexton keeps the key to,
Putting up
Our life, his porcelain,
Like a cup

Discarded of the housewife,
Quaint or broken;
A newer Sevres pleases,
Old ones crack.

I could not die with you,
For one must wait
To shut the other’s gaze down, –
You could not.

And I, could I stand by
And see you freeze,
Without my right of frost,
Death’s privilege?

Nor could I rise with you,
Because your face
Would put out Jesus’,
That new grace

Glow plain and foreign
On my homesick eye,
Except that you, than he
Shone closer by.

They’d judge us — how?
For you served Heaven, you know,
Or sought to;
I could not,

Because you saturated sight,
And I had no more eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise.

And were you lost, I would be,
Though my name
Rang loudest
On the heavenly fame.

And were you saved,
And I condemned to be
Where you were not,
That self were hell to me.

So we must keep apart,
You there, I here,
With just the door ajar
That oceans are,
And prayer,

And that pale sustenance,
Despair!

- Emily Dickinson

So What is Love?

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So what is love? If thou wouldst know
The heart alone can tell:
Two minds with but a single thought,
Two hearts that beat as one.

And whence comes Love? Like morning bright
Love comes without thy call.
And how dies Love? A spirit bright,
Love never dies at all.

- Maria Lovell (trans.)

LAUGHTER CAME FROM EVERY BRICK

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Just these two words He spoke
changed my life,

 

“Enjoy Me.”

 

What a burden I thought I was to carry -
a crucifix, as did He.

 

Love once said to me, “I know a song,
would you like to hear it?”

 

And laughter came from every brick in the street
and from every pore
in the sky.

 

After a night of prayer, He
changed my life when
He sang,

 

“Enjoy Me.”

 

From “Love Poems From God” by Daniel Ladinsky.
Based on original poem by St Teresa of Avila

True Love

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TRUE love has vanished from every heart;
What has befallen all lovers fair?
When did the bonds of friendship part?–
What has befallen the friends that were?
Ah, why are the feet of Khizr lingering?–
The waters of life are no longer clear,
The purple rose has turned pale with fear,
And what has befallen the wind of Spring?

None now sayeth: “A love was mine,
Loyal and wise, to dispel my care.”
None remembers love’s right divine;
What has befallen all lovers fair?
In the midst of the field, to the players’ feet,
The ball of God’s favour and mercy came,
But none has leapt forth to renew the game–
What has befallen the horsemen fleet?

Roses have bloomed, yet no bird rejoiced,
No vibrating throat has rung with the tale;
What can have silenced the hundred-voiced?
What has befallen the nightingale?
Heaven’s music is hushed, and the planets roll
In silence; has Zohra broken her lute?
There is none to press out the vine’s ripe fruit,
And what has befallen the foaming bowl?

A city where kings are but lovers crowned,
A land from the dust of which friendship springs–
Who has laid waste that enchanted ground?
What has befallen the city of kings?
Years have passed since a ruby was won
From the mine of manhood; they labour in vain,
The fleet-footed wind and the quickening rain,
And what has befallen the light of the sun?

Hafiz, the secret of God’s dread task
No man knoweth, in youth or prime
Or in wisest age; of whom would’st thou ask:
What has befallen the wheels of Time?

- Hafiz

- Trans G. Bell (1897)

Not Death But Love

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I thought once how Theocritus had sung

Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,

Who each one in a gracious hand appears

To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:

And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,

The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,

Those of my own life, who by turns had flung

A shadow across me.  Straightway I was ‘ware,

So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move

Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;

And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,–

“Guess now who holds thee!”–”Death,” I said, But, there,

The silver answer rang, “Not Death, but Love.”

- Elizabeth Browning

Tie Your Heart at Night to Mine

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Tie your heart at night to mine, love,
and both will defeat the darkness
like twin drums beating in the forest
against the heavy wall of wet leaves.

Night crossing: black coal of dream
that cuts the thread of earthly orbs
with the punctuality of a headlong train
that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.

Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement,
to the grip on life that beats in your breast,
with the wings of a submerged swan,

So that our dream might reply
to the sky’s questioning stars
with one key, one door closed to shadow.

Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda Poems

Love’s Philosophy by Shelley

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The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In another’s being mingle–
Why not I with thine?

See, the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower could be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;–
What is all this sweet work worth,
If thou kiss not me?

– Percy Bysshe Shelley