Tag Archives: featured poet

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(inter)national poetry month
April 2013

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encore  presentation

2012  featured poets
at my heart’s love songs

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Divine Poems
by classic poets

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i thought i might include a post of  classical poetry  by famous poets of  the past,  though i must admit that i much prefer  “modern”  poetry…  with the exception of  the final poem,  which is my favorite of  all poems.

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No Man is an Island

John Donne
1624

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No man is an island entire of  itself;
every man is a piece of  the continent, a part of  the main;
if  a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,
as well as if  a promontory were,
as well as a manor of  thy friends or of  thine own were;
any man’s death diminishes me,  because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.

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this is actually just a portion of  a longer piece by John Donne  ”Devotions upon Emergent Occasions“  which is a series of reflections that were written as Donne recovered from a serious illness.  the work consists of twenty-three parts  (‘devotions’) describing each stage of the sickness.  each part is further divided into a Meditation,  an Expostulation,  and a Prayer.  this piece is  Meditation XVII,  perhaps the best-known part of the work and forms part of Devotion XVII.

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“I want” — it pleaded — All its life

Emily Dickinson

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“I want” — it pleaded — All its life —
I want — was chief  it said
When Skill entreated it — the last —
And when so newly dead —

I could not deem it late — to hear
That single — steadfast sigh —
The lips had placed as with a “Please”
Toward Eternity —      

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Bright Star

John Keats

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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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A Woman’s Shortcomings

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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She has laughed as softly as if she sighed,
She has counted six, and over,
Of a purse well filled, and a heart well tried -
Oh, each a worthy lover!
They “give her time”;  for her soul must slip
Where the world has set the grooving;
She will lie to none with her fair red lip:
But love seeks truer loving.

She trembles her fan in a sweetness dumb,
As her thoughts were beyond recalling;
With a glance for one, and a glance for some,
From her eyelids rising and falling;
Speaks common words with a blushful air,
Hears bold words, unreproving;
But her silence says – what she never will swear -
And love seeks better loving.

Go, lady! lean to the night-guitar,
And drop a smile to the bringer;
Then smile as sweetly, when he is far,
At the voice of an in-door singer.
Bask tenderly beneath tender eyes;
Glance lightly, on their removing;
And join new vows to old perjuries -
But dare not call it loving!

Unless you can think, when the song is done,
No other is soft in the rhythm;
Unless you can feel, when left by One,
That all men else go with him;
Unless you can know, when unpraised by his breath,
That your beauty itself wants proving;
Unless you can swear “For life, for death!” -
Oh, fear to call it loving!

Unless you can muse in a crowd all day
On the absent face that fixed you;
Unless you can love, as the angels may,
With the breadth of heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,
Through behoving and unbehoving;
Unless you can die when the dream is past -
Oh, never call it loving!

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Come, Walk With Me

Emily Brontë

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Come, walk with me,
There’s only thee
To bless my spirit now -
We used to love on winter nights
To wander through the snow;
Can we not woo back old delights?
The clouds rush dark and wild
They fleck with shade our mountain heights
The same as long ago
And on the horizon rest at last
In looming masses piled;
While moonbeams flash and fly so fast
We scarce can say they smiled -

Come walk with me, come walk with me;
We were not once so few
But Death has stolen our company
As sunshine steals the dew -
He took them one by one and we
Are left the only two;
So closer would my feelings twine
Because they have no stay but thine -

‘Nay call me not – it may not be
Is human love so true?
Can Friendship’s flower droop on for years
And then revive anew?
No, though the soil be wet with tears,
How fair soe’er it grew
The vital sap once perished
Will never flow again
And surer than that dwelling dread,
The narrow dungeon of the dead
Time parts the hearts of men -’

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this is my favorite poem of  all time ~

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First Fig

Edna St. Vincent Millay
1916

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It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -

It gives a lovely light!

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have you entered the

BIG POETRY GIVEAWAY?

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just click  HERE  to go to the giveaway post ~  you’ll get all of  the information about what books are being given away and how to enter.

thanks  for  joining  in!

dani

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*the giveaway closes at midnight  (12:00am)  Pacific Standard Time USA on the night of  April 30,  2013.

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all of  the above works are in the public domain

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2012 featured poet at
my heart’s love songs

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