inspiring poems

🌾 Today’s Poem ~ How Do I Love Thee?

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How Do I Love Thee?

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.

 

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🌾 Today’s Poem ~ “?”

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“?”

Robert Willam Service

If you had the choice of two women to wed,
(Though of course the idea is quite absurd)
And the first from her heels to her dainty head
Was charming in every sense of the word:
And yet in the past (I grieve to state),
She never had been exactly “straight”.

And the second — she was beyond all cavil,
A model of virtue, I must confess;
And yet, alas! she was dull as the devil,
And rather a dowd in the way of dress;
Though what she was lacking in wit and beauty,
She more than made up for in “sense of duty”.

Now, suppose you must wed, and make no blunder,
And either would love you, and let you win her —
Which of the two would you choose, I wonder,
The stolid saint or the sparkling sinner?

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🌾 Today’s Poem ~ Bright Star

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Bright Star

John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-
No- yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever- or else swoon to death.

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🌾 Today’s Poem ~ Between Us Now

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Between Us Now

Thomas Hardy

Between us now and here –
   Two thrown together
Who are not wont to wear
   Life’s flushest feather –
Who see the scenes slide past,
The daytimes dimming fast,
Let there be truth at last,
   Even if despair.

So thoroughly and long
   Have you now known me,
So real in faith and strong
   Have I now shown me,
That nothing needs disguise
Further in any wise,
Or asks or justifies
   A guarded tongue.

Face unto face, then, say,
   Eyes mine own meeting,
Is your heart far away,
   Or with mine beating?
When false things are brought low,
And swift things have grown slow,
Feigning like froth shall go,
   Faith be for aye.

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🌾 Today’s Poem ~ Face to Face

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Face to Face

Tagore

Day after day, O lord of my life,
shall I stand before thee face to face.
With folded hands, O lord of all worlds,
shall I stand before thee face to face.

Under thy great sky in solitude and silence,
with humble heart shall I stand before thee face to face.

In this laborious world of thine, tumultuous with toil
and with struggle, among hurrying crowds
shall I stand before thee face to face.

And when my work shall be done in this world,
O King of kings, alone and speechless
shall I stand before thee face to face.

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🌾 Today’s Poem ~ Your Laughter

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Your Laughter

Pablo Neruda

Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.

Do not take away the rose,
the lance flower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.

My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.

My love, in the darkest
hour your laughter
opens, and if suddenly
you see my blood staining
the stones of the street,
laugh, because your laughter
will be for my hands
like a fresh sword.

Next to the sea in the autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country.

Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
boy who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring,
but never your laughter
for I would die.

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🌾 Today’s Poem ~ your little voice

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your little voice

e. e. cummings

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

 

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🌾 Today’s Poem ~ Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight

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Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight

Mark Twain

Goodnight, Sweetheart, goodnight —
The stars are shining bright,
The snow is turning white,
Dim is the failing light,
Fast falls the glooming night, —
      All right!
      Sleep tight!
      Goodnight.

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🌾 Today’s Poem ~ The Dream

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The Dream

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love, if I weep it will not matter,
And if you laugh I shall not care;
Foolish am I to think about it,
But it is good to feel you there.

Love, in my sleep I dreamed of waking,
White and awful the moonlight reached
Over the floor, and somewhere, somewhere
There was a shutter loose- it screeched!

Swung in the wind- and no wind blowing-
I was afraid and turned to you,
Put out my hand to you for comfort-
And you were gone! Cold as the dew,

Under my hand the moonlight lay!
Love, if you laugh I shall not care,
But if I weep it will not matter-
Ah, it is good to feel you there.

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🌾 Today’s Poem ~ Love Has Crept into Her Sealed Heart

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Love Has Crept into her Sealed Heart

D. H. Lawrence

Love has crept into her sealed heart
As a field bee, black and amber,
Breaks from the winter-cell, to clamber
Up the warm grass where the sunbeams start.

Love has crept into her summery eyes,
And a glint of colored sunshine brings
Such as his along the folded wings
Of the bee before he flies.

But I with my ruffling, impatient breath
Have loosened the wings of the wild young sprite;
He has opened them out in a reeling flight,
And down her words he hasteneth.

Love flies delighted in her voice:
The hum of his glittering, drunken wings
Sets quivering with music the little things
That she says, and her simple words rejoice.

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