[tullepen]

Soul and the Old Woman by Rumi

What is the soul? Consciousness.The more awareness,the
deeper the soul, and when

such essence overflows, you feel a sacredness around.It's
so simple to tell one who

puts on a robe and pretends to be a dervish from the real
thing.We know the taste

of pure water.Words can sound like a poem but not have
any juice,no flavor to

relish.How long do you look at pictures on a bathhouse
wall? Soul is what draws

you away from those pictures to talk with the old woman
who sits outside by the door

in the sun.She's half blind, but she has what soul loves
to flow into.She's kind;she weeps.

She makes quick personal decisions, and laughs so easily.

[ms-nietzsche]

Love's Philosophy, by 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 one another's being 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 it's brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;--
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

[diorelle]

you shall above all things be glad and young
e.e cummings

you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you're young,whatever life you wear


it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love


whose any mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time


that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.


I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

[jinxed]

Ephemera
by William Butler Yeats

"Your eyes that once were never weary of mine
Are bowed in sotrow under pendulous lids,
Because our love is waning."
And then She:
"Although our love is waning, let us stand
By the lone border of the lake once more,
Together in that hour of gentleness
When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.
How far away the stars seem, and how far
Is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!"
Pensive they paced along the faded leaves,
While slowly he whose hand held hers replied:
"Passion has often worn our wandering hearts."
The woods were round them, and the yellow leaves
Fell like faint meteors in the gloom, and once
A rabbit old and lame limped down the path;
Autumn was over him: and now they stood
On the lone border of the lake once more:
Turning, he saw that she had thrust dead leaves
Gathered in silence, dewy as her eyes,
In bosom and hair.
"Ah, do not mourn," he said,
"That we are tired, for other loves await us;
Hate on and love through unrepining hours.
Before us lies eternity; our souls
Are love, and a continual farewell."

[Over the Sea]

Keats- To Autumn
SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

[ms-nietzsche]

CCLXXXVI
William Wordsworth

My heart leaps up when I behold
A Rainbow in the sky;
So it was when my life began,
So it is now I am a man,
So be it when I shall grow old
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the man
And I could with my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

[yesitsdagny]

Unending Love by Rabindranath Tagore

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times...
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
the distressful tears of farewell,
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man's days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours -
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

[MissMagAddict]

when faces called flowers float out of the ground

and breathing is wishing and wishing is having-
but keeping is downward and doubting and never
-it's april(yes,april;my darling)it's spring!
yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly
yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be
(yes the mountains are dancing together)

when every leaf opens without any sound
and wishing is having and having is giving-
but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense
-alive;we're alive,dear:it's(kiss me now)spring!
now the pretty birds hover so she and so he
now the little fish quiver so you and so i
(now the mountains are dancing, the mountains)

when more than was lost has been found has been found
and having is giving and giving is living-
but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing
-it's spring(all our night becomes day)o,it's spring!
all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky
all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea
(all the mountains are dancing;are dancing)

ee cummings

[xerq]

Conceit-D.H. Lawrence

It is conceit that kills us
and makes us cowards instead of gods.

Under the great Command: Know thy self, and that thou art mortal!
we have become fatally self-conscious, fatally self-important, fatally entangled in the cocoon coils of our conceit.

Now we have to admit we can't know ourselves, we can only know about ourselves.
And I am not interested to know about myself any more,
I only entangle myself in the knowing.

Now let me be myself,
now let me be myself, and flicker forth,
now let me be myself, in the being, one of the gods.

[AgrenateD]

Leaning Into The Evenings - Pablo Neruda

Leaning into the evenings I throw my sad nets
to your ocean eyes.

There my loneliness stretches and burns in the tallest
bonfire,
arms twisting like a drowning man’s.

I cast red signals over your absent eyes
which lap like the sea at the lighthouse shore.

You guard only darkness, my distant female,
sometimes the coast of dread emerges from your stare.

Leaning into the evenings I toss my sad nets
to that sea which stirs your ocean eyes.

The night birds peck at the first stars
that twinkle like my soul as I love you.

Night gallops on her shadowy mare
scattering blue wheat stalks over the fields.

[Marvystone]

sometimes I get attracted by stuff like this:

Wet Evening in April//Patrick Kavanagh
The birds sang in the wet trees
And as I listened to them it was a hundred years from now
And I was dead and someone else was listening to them.
But I was glad I had recorded for him
The melancholy.

[Scott]

obviously-

percy bysshe shelley's the mask(or masque) of anarchy

Quote:

"Stand ye calm and resolute, Like a forest close and mute, With folded arms and looks which are Weapons of unvanquished war. And if then the tyrants dare, Let them ride among you there, Slash, and stab, and maim and hew, What they like, that let them do. With folded arms and steady eyes, And little fear, and less surprise Look upon them as they slay Till their rage has died away Then they will return with shame To the place from which they came, And the blood thus shed will speak In hot blushes on their cheek. Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you- Ye are many — they are few"

[Erin]

Ah, so many poems to browse!

Can anybody suggest a short (love) poem to be read at my wedding?

Thanks..

[tullepen]

When you come back inside my chest,
no matter how far I've wandered off,
I look around and see the way.

At the end of my life, with just one breath
left, if you come then, I'll sit up and sing.

says Rumi.

[Teratel]

The world is clueless, to what I see.
Dreams are forever, for whatever may be.
Feelings run deep, in the mind of the unknown.
From the start of everafter, the hurt is never shown.
In the darkness there's a light, far off in the distance.
Once the heart is felt, there's little power of resistance.
Nights move on to days, and future to past.
When does the dream begin, and will it last.
The light in the distance, could be a sun.
Is there a world spinning around, just like this one.
When touched from the heart, one may never know.
To feel the pleasure, and let it show.
Love for desire from the heart, all can see.
Desire for love in the heart, deep inside me.
To see a feeling and touch a sound.
To feel a silent kiss is one I have found.
It's one that's sweet, and hard to resist.
A love from my past, of one I have kissed.
I keep the feeling, inside my heart.
The dream of finding her, and never part.
So the story goes, as I sit alone.
Thinking of what may be, far away from home.

Distant Love - Christopher E. Jones