Ideal  Love

To My Dear and Loving Husband
                Anne Bradstreet

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee.
if ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompetence.
Thy love is such I can no way repaid.
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let's so persever
That when we live no more, we may live ever.

Love's Philosophy
           Percy Bysshe Shelley

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 are all these kissings worth,
     If thou kiss not me?

Shakeperean Sonnets

1  Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
2  Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
3  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
4  And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
5  Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
6  And often is his gold compexion dimm'd;
7  And every fair from fair somtimes declines,
8  By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
9  But thy eternal summer shall not fade
10 Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
11 Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shande.
12 When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;
13 So lon as men canbreathe or eyes can see,
14 So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

1  Let me not to the marriage of true minds
2  Admit impediments. lOve is not love
3  Which alters when it alternation finds,
4  Or bends with the remover to remove.
5  O no! it is an ever-fied mark
6  That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
7  It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
8  Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
9  Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
10 Within his bending sickle's compass come;
11 Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
12 But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
13 If this be error and upon me prov'd,
14 I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.