The Poetry of Love
Love in Prose
Love in Religious Writing
Love one another
The Philosophy of Love
Your Assignment
the killing stopped
Love Links
War on Drugs
Web Rings
Contact & feedback
War and Peace
For loving, and for saying so
In whining Poetry.
- John Donne
In love the heavens themselves
do guide the state;
Money buys lands, and wives
are sold by fate.
from: The Merry Wives of Windsor
If thou rememb'rest not the slightest folly
That ever love did make thee run into,
Thou hast not loved.
Or if thou hast not sat as I do now,
Wearing thy hearer in thy mistress' praise,
Thou hast not loved.
Or if thou hast not broke from company
Abruptly, as my passion now makes me,
Thou hast not loved.
from: As You Like It
Love to faults is always blind,
Always is to joy inclined,
Lawless, winged and unconfined,
And breaks all chains from every mind.
Deceit to secrecy confined,
Lawful, cautious and refined,
To every thing but interest blind-
And forges fetters for the mind.
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 everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the 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.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
O, my luve is like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June.
O, my luve is like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I,
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.
Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun!
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only luve,
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my luve,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile!
- Robert Burns
As I walk through the music
As I walk through the music,
I stop.
While others continue on,
I pause to listen.
As I stand in the music,
I listen... inhale...
breathe it in...
I sit in the melody
and let it wash over me.
It envelopes the space,
As I rest in its joy.
As I float in the music
I drift
where it takes me.
I alone stop for the music.
But then realize,
It is always there to hear,
If only I stop...
To listen to the music.
As I pass by the love
It beacons to me,
calling with its sweet song.
May I enter there?
Is it as elusive as it seems?
Or is it always there...
like the music,
to immerse myself...
in the rapture of the love.
If only I stop,
to listen to the music.
J L Lade, October 17, 2000
Hovers within my gates;
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates:
When I lie tangled in her hair,
And fettered to her eye;
The Gods, that wanton in the air,
Know no such liberty.
Stone walls do not a prison make
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free;
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.
To Althea, From Prison by Richard Lovelace