If you are a long time follower of my blog, then you know that today is one of my favorite holidays and you know that I share poetry, as well as art and more (sometimes).
Photo by Denise Johnson on Unsplash
Happy Valentine’s day! I used to hate this holiday, but after many years of grumbling, I decided to make the day my own. Now, it’s honestly my favorite holiday (and the only day of the year I get to wear my cupid cow earrings!). Why? How? If you’re curious where the tradition started, you can read about it here on an older blog of mine. If you enjoy the poems and want to read more, you can find them in the blog filters under “Valentine’s Day poems.” This year I have 4 poems of others’ to share and 1 of my own.
I heard a snippet of a poem last fall in an old tv show and I had to look up the whole thing. I knew I’d heard it before, but couldn’t place it until I identified it as a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. And then my love of the Romantics burst into flame once more. I don’t know why they’ve always been amongst my favorite poets but they will always hold a place in my heart. SO I decided to share some of the classics this year by some of my favorite classic poets. The challenge I gave myself was to share a poem that might not be as well known as some of their other poems (in the hopes that you might also not be familiar with them–we’ll see if that’s true).
First, I have to share the poem that started this jaunt down memory lane. Then of course I must go with my one true love of the Romantic poets, John Keats (and if you haven’t seen the movie BRIGHT STAR, I highly recommend it). Next, a little deviation to one of my favorite female poets (NOT from the Romantic era, but I still love her work): Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Then I share a modern poem that actually doesn’t seem to fit (as it’s about the end of a relationship ultimately), but when I discovered it, I read it over and over again. It’s the first part that really captures me more than anything, as well as the overall feeling of love that made me feel like it did belong (and I HAD to share it). Finally, my paltry offering this year. It’s one I’ve worked and reworked a million times the last few years and I’m finally pulling it out to share. I hope you enjoy them all.
Love’s Philosophy
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?—
See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would 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?
Bright Star
by 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.
Sonnets from the Portuguese XIV
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love’s sake only. Do not say
“I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day”—
For these things in themselves, Belovëd, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou may’st love on, through love’s eternity.
A Soft-edged reed of light
by Julia Copus
That was the house where you asked me to remain
on the eve of my planned departure. Do you remember?
The house remembers it – the deal table
with the late September sun stretched on its back.
As long as you like, you said, and the chairs, the clock,
the diamond leaded lights in the pine-clad alcove
of that 1960s breakfast-room were our witnesses.
I had only meant to stay for a week
but you reached out a hand, the soft white cuff of your shirt
open at the wrist, and out in the yard,
the walls of the house considered themselves
in the murk of the lily-pond, and it was done.
Done. Whatever gods had bent to us then to whisper,
Here is your remedy – take it – here, your future,
either they lied or we misheard.
How changed we are now, how superior
after the end of it – the unborn children,
the mornings that came with a soft-edged reed of light
over and over, the empty rooms we woke to.
And yet if that same dark-haired boy
were to lean towards me now, with one shy hand
bathed in September sun, as if to say,
All things are possible – then why not this?
I’d take it still, praying it might be so.
Come bob a bit with me, my little sea parrot
by Jena Benton
Once I was like
the young tufted puffin
adrift at sea,
roaming the waves alone.
It is only after years
of learning survival
that they seek
a lifelong mate.
How do they know
which waves to ride
to find their love?
Perhaps it was the same way
that I found you:
sailing along,
surviving life’s storms,
and discovering the promise
of your quiet devotion.
When the tide was right,
we sailed in the same direction.
No longer alone
we roam the seas
of the world,
side by side,
day by day,
happy together.