Because She Would Ask Me Why I Loved Her (Christopher Brennan)

If questioning would make us wise No eyes would ever gaze in eyes; If all our tale were told in speech No mouths would wander each to each. Were spirits free from mortal mesh And love not bound in hearts of flesh No aching breasts would yearn to meet And find their ecstasy complete. For who is there that lives and knows The secret powers by which he grows? Were knowledge all, what were our need To thrill and faint and sweetly bleed?. Then seek not, sweet, the "If" and "Why" I love you now until I die. For I must love because I live And life in me is what you give.

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I Carry Your Heart (E.E. Cummings)

I carry your heart with me, I carry it in my heart, I am never without it , Anywhere I go you go, my dear; and whatever is done, By only me is your doing,my darling, I fear no fate, for you are my fate,my sweet, I want no world, for beautiful you are my world, my true, And it's you are whatever a moon has always meant, And whatever a sun will always sing is you. Here is the deepest secret nobody knows, Here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud, And the sky of the sky of a tree called life; Which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide, And this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart. I carry your heart. I carry it in my heart.

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Camomile Tea (Katherine Mansfield)

Outside the sky is light with stars;
There's a hollow roaring from the sea.
And, alas! for the little almond flowers,
The wind is shaking the almond tree.

How little I thought, a year ago,
In the horrible cottage upon the Lee
That he and I should be sitting so
And sipping a cup of camomile tea.

Light as feathers the witches fly,
The horn of the moon is plain to see;
By a firefly under a jonquil flower
A goblin toasts a bumble-bee.

We might be fifty, we might be five,
So snug, so compact, so wise are we!
Under the kitchen-table leg
My knee is pressing against his knee.

Our shutters are shut, the fire is low,
The tap is dripping peacefully;
The saucepan shadows on the wall
Are black and round and plain to see.


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Bright Star (John Keats)

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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How do I Love Thee... (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

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.


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