Ah, My Beloved

by Omar Khayyam (1048 - 1131)

Ah, my beloved, fill the cup that clears
Today of past regrets and future fears;
Tomorrow? Why, tomorrow I may be,
Myself, with yesterday's sev'n thousand years.

[courtesy of lovepoetry.com]

Lodged

by Robert Frost

The rain to the wind said,
"You push and I'll pelt."
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged -- though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.

[Courtesy of famous poet and poetry]

A Magic Moment I Remember

by Alexander Pushkin

A magic moment I remember:
I raised my eyes and you were there.
A fleeting vision, the quintessence
Of all that's beautiful and rare.

I pray to mute despair and anguish
To vain pursuits the world esteems,
Long did I near your soothing accents,
Long did your features haunt my dreams.

Time passed- A rebel storm-blast scattered
The reveries that once were mine
And I forgot your soothing accents,
Your features gracefully divine.

In dark days of enforced retirement
I gazed upon grey skies above
With no ideals to inspire me,
No one to cry for, live for, love.

Then came a moment of renaissance,
I looked up- you again are there,
A fleeting vision, the quintessence
Of all that`s beautiful and rare.

[Courtesy of lovepoetry.com]

One Day I Wrote Her Name

by Edmund Spenser

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide and made my pains his prey.
"Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain essay
A mortal thing so to immortalize;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise."
"Not so," quoth I; "let baser things devise
To lie in dust, but you shall live by fame;
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write you glorious name:
Where, whenas Death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew."

[Courtesy of lovepoetry.com]

The Lake

by Edgar Allen Poe

In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less--
So lovely was the loneliness,
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound
And the tall pines that towered around.

But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody--
Then- ah then I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet, that terror was not fright
But a tremulous delight--
A feeling not the jewelled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define--
Nor Love- although the Love were thine.

Death was in that poisonous wave
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining--
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of that dim lake.

[courtesy of famous Poet and Poetry]

It's all I have to bring to-day

by Emily Dickinson

It's all I have to bring to-day,
This, and my heart beside,
This, and my heart, and all the fields,
And all the meadows wide.
Be sure you count, should I forget, --
Someone the sum could tell, --
This, and my heart, and all the bees
Which in the clover dwell.

[Source: famous poet and poetry]

The Hour Glass

by Ben Jonson

Consider this small dust, here in the glass,
By atoms moved:
Could you believe that this the body was
Of one that loved;
And in his mistress' flame playing like a fly,
Was turned to cinders by her eye:
Yes; and in death, as life unblessed,
To have it expressed,
Even ashes of lovers find no rest.

She Comes Not

by Herbert Trench

She comes not when Noon is on the roses--
Too bright is Day.
She comes not to the Soul till it reposes
From work and play.

But when Night is on the hills, and the great Voices
Roll in from Sea,
By starlight and candle-light and dreamlight
She comes to me.

[courtesy of Famous Poet and Poetry]

You Left Me

by Emily Dickinson

You left me, sweet, two legacies, -
A legacy of love
A Heavenly Father would content,
Had He the offer of;

You left me boundaries of pain
Capacious as the sea,
Between eternity and time,
Your consciousness and me.

I wandered lonely as a Cloud

By William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o'er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd
A host of dancing Daffodills;
Along the Lake, beneath the trees,
Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:—
A Poet could not but be gay
In such a laughing company:
I gaz'd—and gaz'd—but little thought
What wealth the shew to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.

[Source: Famous Poet & Poetry]

Shall I Compare Thee to Summers Day

by William Shakespeare

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 dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest 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.

(William Shakespeare 1593-1670)
[source:William-Shakespeare Info]

Wind and Window Flower

by Robert Frost

Lovers, forget your love,
And list to the love of these,
She a window flower,
And he a winter breeze.

When the frosty window veil
Was melted down at noon,
And the caged yellow bird
Hung over her in tune,

He marked her through the pane,
He could not help but mark,
And only passed her by
To come again at dark.

He was a winter wind,
Concerned with ice and snow,
Dead weeds and unmated birds,
And little of love could know.

But he sighed upon the sill,
He gave the sash a shake,
As witness all within
Who lay that night awake.

Perchance he half prevailed
To win her for the flight
From the firelit looking-glass
And warm stove-window light.

But the flower leaned aside
And thought of naught to say,
And morning found the breeze
A hundred miles away.

[courtesy of famous poet and poetry]

Wild Nights

by Emily Dickinson

Wild nights. Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile the winds
To a heart in port
Done with the compass
Done with the chart.

Rowing in Eden.
Ah, the sea.
Might I but moor
Tonight with thee!

For Some We Loved

by Omar Khayyam

For some we loved, the loveliest and the best
That from His vintage rolling Time hath pressed,
Have drunk the Cup a round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to rest.

[Source: Famous Poet and Poetry]

Fire and Ice

by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

[Source: Famous Poet and Poetry]

The Dream

by 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.

[Source: Famous Poet and Poetry]

Love And A Question

by Robert Frost

A stranger came to the door at eve,
And he spoke the bridegroom fair.
He bore a green-white stick in his hand,
And, for all burden, care.
He asked with the eyes more than the lips
For a shelter for the night,
And he turned and looked at the road afar
Without a window light.

The bridegroom came forth into the porch
With, "Let us look at the sky,
And question what of the night to be,
Stranger, you and I."
The woodbine leaves littered the yard,
The woodbine berries were blue,
Autumn, yes, winter was in the wind;
"Stranger, I wish I knew."

Within, the bride in the dusk alone
Bent over the open fire,
Her face rose-red with the glowing coal
And the thought of the heart's desire.
The bridegroom looked at the weary road,
Yet saw but her within,
And wished her heart in a case of gold
And pinned with a silver pin.

The bridegroom thought it little to give
A dole of bread, a purse,
A heartfelt prayer for the poor of God,
Or for the rich a curse;
But whether or not a man was asked
To mar the love of two
by harboring woe in the bridal house,
The bridegroom wished he knew.

[Source: Famous Poet and Poetry]

Who Ever Loved That Loved Not at First Sight?

by Christopher Marlowe

It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is overruled by fate.
When two are stripped, long ere the course begin,
We wish that one should love, the other win;
And one especially do we affect
Of two gold ingots, like in each respect:
The reason no man knows; let it suffice
What we behold is censured by our eyes.
Where both deliberate, the love is slight:
Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?

[Source: Famous Poet and Poetry]

Reluctance

by Robert Frost

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question "Whither?"

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

[Source: Famous poet and Poetry]