Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

day? If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And every fair from fair sometime declines, And treat those two impostors just the same;
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st; And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st: If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, And lose, and start again at your beginnings
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
She Walks in Beauty And so hold on when there is nothing in you
BY LORD BYRON (GEORGE GORDON) Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

She walks in beauty, like the night If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Of cloudless climes and starry skies; Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
And all that’s best of dark and bright If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
Meet in her aspect and her eyes; If all men count with you, but none too much;
Thus mellowed to that tender light If you can fill the unforgiving minute
Which heaven to gaudy day denies. With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
One shade the more, one ray the less, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress, Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines
Or softly lightens o’er her face; By Pablo Neruda
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow, Write, for example, 'The night is shattered
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent, The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent! Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
If—
BY RUDYARD KIPLING Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
(‘Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards and Fairies) I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

If you can keep your head when all about you She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes. I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
lost her.
I love thee with the passion put to use
To hear the immense night, still more immense In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
without her. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture. With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,

What does it matter that my love could not keep her. Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
The night is shattered and she is not with me. I shall but love thee better after death.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the

distance. Annabel Lee
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her. BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

My sight searches for her as though to go to her. It was many and many a year ago,
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me. In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
The same night whitening the same trees. By the name of Annabel Lee;
We, of that time, are no longer the same. And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved
her. I was a child and she was a child,
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing. In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses I and my Annabel Lee—
before. With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes. Coveted her and me.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love And this was the reason that, long ago,
her. In this kingdom by the sea,
Love is so short, forgetting is so long. A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
Because through nights like this one I held her in my So that her highborn kinsmen came
arms And bore her away from me,
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her. To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her. The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) In this kingdom by the sea)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning - 1806-1861 That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. But our love it was stronger by far than the love
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height Of those who were older than we—
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight Of many far wiser than we—
For the ends of being and ideal grace. And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
For the moon never beams, without bringing me Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
dreams Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride, She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
In her sepulchre there by the sea— For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
The Road Not Taken Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
BY ROBERT FROST And, happy melodist, unwearied,
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, For ever piping songs for ever new;
And sorry I could not travel both More happy love! more happy, happy love!
And be one traveler, long I stood For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
And looked down one as far as I could For ever panting, and for ever young;
To where it bent in the undergrowth; All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
Then took the other, as just as fair, A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
Though as for that the passing there To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Had worn them really about the same, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
And both that morning equally lay What little town by river or sea shore,
In leaves no step had trodden black. Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Oh, I kept the first for another day! Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
Yet knowing how way leads on to way, And, little town, thy streets for evermore
I doubted if I should ever come back. Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence: O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
I took the one less traveled by, With forest branches and the trodden weed;
And that has made all the difference. Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
Ode on a Grecian Urn When old age shall this generation waste,
BY JOHN KEATS Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express Ye know on earth, and all ye need to
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: know."
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both, “Hope” is the thing with feathers (1861)
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? BY EMILY DICKINSON
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? “Hope” is the thing with feathers –
What pipes and timbrels? What wild That perches in the soul –
ecstasy? And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all – To live with thee, and be thy love.

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
And sore must be the storm – When Rivers rage and Rocks grow cold,
That could abash the little Bird And Philomel becometh dumb,
That kept so many warm – The rest complains of cares to come.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land – The flowers do fade, and wanton fields,
And on the strangest Sea – To wayward winter reckoning yields,
Yet – never – in Extremity, A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
It asked a crumb – of me. Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of Roses,

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Christopher Marlowe - 1564-1593 Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten:
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove Thy belt of straw and Ivy buds,
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, The Coral clasps and amber studs,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields. All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks, But could youth last, and love still breed,
By shallow rivers to whose falls Had joys no date, nor age no need,
Melodious birds sing madrigals. Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee, and be thy love.
And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies, Bonsai
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle Edith Tiempo
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
All that I love
A gown made of the finest wool I fold over once
Which from our pretty lambs we pull; And once again
Fair lined slippers for the cold, And keep in a box
With buckles of the purest gold; Or a slit in a hollow post
Or in my shoe.
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs: All that I love?
And if these pleasures may thee move, Why, yes, but for the moment-
Come live with me, and be my love. And for all time, both.
Something that folds and keeps easy,
The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing Son’s note or Dad’s one gaudy tie,
For thy delight each May morning: A roto picture of a queen,
If these delights thy mind may move, A blue Indian shawl, even
Then live with me and be my love. A money bill.

The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd It’s utter sublimation,

BY SIR WALTER RALEGH A feat, this heart’s control
Moment to moment
If all the world and love were young, To scale all love down
And truth in every Shepherd’s tongue, To a cupped hand’s size
These pretty pleasures might me move, Till seashells are broken pieces
From God’s own bright teeth, Ah, lovely inquisitive lips!
And life and love are real You would want to fathom the ocean
Things you can run and And scale the infinite blue sky above us.
Breathless hand over
To the merest child. Read! Read the answer in my eyes
And in the quiverless muteness of my lips...
Testimony For there are things that are voiceless
by Maningning Miclat And would be told only in the silence!

The territory of shadows is a petal, Song of a City Dweller

An organic wish, a solidified thought, by N.V.M. Gonzales
An awareness of wind catching fishes,
A gratitude for getting rid of clothes. Clear as lovely crystal
Grey like doves
With the kind gesture of an evening: low tide and The waters of the lake
safe, Have only silence for their voice;
I am sharing the water with the Hundred Islands. So will my heart seek long for song,
Floating on the galaxies' reflection, So will my dreams be lost like ghost;
I float as night sky carves down an embrace, Pale as lonely smoke
an elusive feeling of eternity and floating,
a gesture of wind and a bath of moonlight
from the sea bottom. I am the salt in the evening.
I am the celebration of beginning.
I, finally getting rid of my clothes.
I, weightless, without knowing what.
Between the sky and me is the wind.

There is an ageless consciousness of being a woman.

There is a shapeless idea of being in the water.
There is a testimony of the sky and the earth.
There is no longer the terrestrial truth,
I am no longer a victim of war.

You Ask Me How Much I Love You

by Benito F. Reyes

You ask me how much I love you

Ah, lovely inquisitive lips!
You would want to fathom the ocean
And scale the infinite blue sky above us.

Shall I count the sands on the seashore,

Or pick the numberless stars of heaven
Like some sweet woodland blossoms?

Ask then the bold eagle of the air

If he could soar the ends of the distance,
Or the worm of the ground if it could crawl
Down to the very core of earth.

And you ask me how much I love you,