http://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1373572652p2/4379.jpg “I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my eyes and all is born again.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
http://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1252590596p2/229667.jpg “What a strange thing!
to be alive
beneath cherry blossoms.”
― Kobayashi Issa, Poems
Water, water, every where, / And all the boards did shrink; / Water, water, every where / Nor any drop to drink
'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', Samuel Taylor Coleridge
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye / Who cheer when soldier lads march by, / Sneak home and pray you'll never know / The hell where youth and laughter go
'Suicide in the Trenches', Siegfried Sassoon
you are much more than simply dead/I am a dish for your ashes / I am a fist for your vanished air / the most terrible thing about life/ is finding it gone
'The Unblinking Grief', Charles Bukowski
You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies, / You may trod me in the very dirt / But still, like dust, I’ll rise
'Still I Rise', Maya Angelou
How Do I Love Thee?
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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 with a 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.
“Sonnet 18” by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
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, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
http://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1429857566p2/23988.jpg “You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
― Mary Oliver
http://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1392303683p2/1438.jpg “What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.”
― Walt Whitman
Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
~ Czeslaw Milosz, Love
Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, Bewilderment
I don’t know how many souls I have.
I’ve changed at every moment.
I always feel like a stranger.
I’ve never seen or found myself.
~ Fernando Pessoa, Untitled
Death is near
because it is an idea not a body
and love is distant
because it is a body not an idea
~ Adunis, Candlelight
Tree you are, / Moss you are, / You are violets with wind above them. / A child - so high - you are, / And all this is folly to the world
'A Girl', Ezra Pound
Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, / Or bends with the remover to remove: / O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, / That looks on tempests, and is never shake
'Sonnet 116', William Shakespeare
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love / If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles
'Leaves of Grass', Walt Whitman
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.
I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.
Invictus
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starlight at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there, I did not die