Love Poems

[DWill]

Well, this one begins and ends with "love." It was used by an old friend at her wedding. I can't think of too many love poems by Frost (that is, of a person for a person).

Two Look At Two
Robert Frost

Love and forgetting might have carried them
A little further up the mountain side
With night so near, but not much further up.
They must have halted soon in any case
With thoughts of a path back, how rough it was
With rock and washout, and unsafe in darkness;
When they were halted by a tumbled wall
With barbed-wire binding. They stood facing this,
Spending what onward impulse they still had
In One last look the way they must not go,
On up the failing path, where, if a stone
Or earthslide moved at night, it moved itself;
No footstep moved it. 'This is all,' they sighed,
Good-night to woods.' But not so; there was more.
A doe from round a spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall, as near the wall as they.
She saw them in their field, they her in hers.
The difficulty of seeing what stood still,
Like some up-ended boulder split in two,
Was in her clouded eyes; they saw no fear there.
She seemed to think that two thus they were safe.
Then, as if they were something that, though strange,
She could not trouble her mind with too long,
She sighed and passed unscared along the wall.
'This, then, is all. What more is there to ask?'
But no, not yet. A snort to bid them wait.
A buck from round the spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall as near the wall as they.
This was an antlered buck of lusty nostril,
Not the same doe come back into her place.
He viewed them quizzically with jerks of head,
As if to ask, 'Why don't you make some motion?
Or give some sign of life? Because you can't.
I doubt if you're as living as you look."
Thus till he had them almost feeling dared
To stretch a proffering hand

[realiz]

Another one by Robert Graves. I wonder if he had a troubled love life?

Never Such Love

Twined together and, as is customary,
For words of rapture groping, they
'Never such love,' swore, 'ever before was!'
Contrast with all loves that had failed or staled
Registered their own as love indeed

And was this not to blab idly
The heart's fated inconstancy?
Better in love to seal the love-sure lips,
For truly love was before words were,
And no word given, no word broken.

When the name 'love' is uttered
(Love, the near-honourable malady
With which in greed and haste they
Each other do infect and curse)
Or, worse, is written down....

Wise after the event, by love withered,
A 'never more!' most frantically
Sorrow and shame would proclaim
Such as, they'd swear, never before were:
True lovers even in this.

[realiz]

I did a little reading on Robert Graves, and yes, sounds like he went through some stormy times. Married young, four children, then left his wife for another woman, which included a suicide attempt by the other woman, she eventually left him years later, and shortly after he started a relationship with the wife of a friend whom he eventually married had another family with, and spent the rest of his life with (true love at last or just got tired of looking?). Lots of ups and downs to write poetry about. Here is one more that I liked:

Counting the Beats

You, love, and I,
(He whispers) you and I,
And if no more than only you and I
What care you or I ?

Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.

Cloudless day,
Night, and a cloudless day,
Yet the huge storm will burst upon their heads one day
From a bitter sky.

Where shall we be,
(She whispers) where shall we be,
When death strikes home, O where then shall we be
Who were you and I ?

Not there but here,
(He whispers) only here,
As we are, here, together, now and here,
Always you and I.

Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.

Robert Graves

[Saffron]

DWill, here is another Frost poem of love. I rather like the idea expressed - come be my love in the rain.

A Line-storm Song
by Robert Frost

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift,
The road is forlorn all day,
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,
And the hoof-prints vanish away.
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
Expend their bloom in vain.
Come over the hills and far with me,
And be my love in the rain.

The birds have less to say for themselves
In the wood-world's torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves,
Although they are no less there:
All song of the woods is crushed like some
Wild, easily shattered rose.
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
Where the boughs rain when it blows.

There is the gale to urge behind
And bruit our singing down,
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind
From which to gather your gown.
What matter if we go clear to the west,
And come not through dry-shod?
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast
The rain-fresh goldenrod.

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells
But it seems like the sea's return
To the ancient lands where it left the shells
Before the age of the fern;
And it seems like the time when after doubt
Our love came back amain.
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
And be my love in the rain.

[giselle]

Saffron

here is another Frost poem of love. I rather like the idea expressed - come be my love in the rain

I rather like it too. I think Frost captures the excitement, romance and eroticism of love in the rain very well. And I think it speaks to love under conditions of adversity as well.

realiz

I did a little reading on Robert Graves, and yes, sounds like he went through some stormy times.

He certainly did and I'm sure his love life provided plenty of grist for his poetry mill. Sounds like he had his share of "rain" and that was probably a good thing, at least it gave him something to write about.

[Saffron]

Here is an all time favorite poem of mine and it is a replay (I've posted it before). It might be more a sex poem than a love poem, but I think I can make a case for it's appearance here.

Topography Analysis

After we flew across the country we
got in bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma, my
New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho
bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas
burning against your Kansas your Kansas
burning against my Kansas, your Eastern
Standard Time pressing into my
Pacific Time, my Mountain Time
beating against your Central Time, your
sun rising swiftly from the right my
sun rising swiftly from the left your
moon rising slowly form the left my
moon rising slowly form the right until
all four bodies of the sky
burn above us, sealing us together,
all our cities twin cities,
all our states united, one
nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Sharon Olds

[realiz]

Topography Analysis

That is great, except I am not really sure that I understand it. Here is another e.e. cummings poem which has also used the rain theme.


i have found what you are like by E. E. Cummings
i have found what you are like
the rain,

(Who feathers frightened fields
with the superior dust-of-sleep. wields

easily the pale club of the wind
and swirled justly souls of flower strike

the air in utterable coolness

deeds of green thrilling light
with thinned

newfragile yellows

lurch and.press

-in the woods
which
stutter
and

sing

And the coolness of your smile is
stirringofbirds between my arms;but
i should rather than anything
have(almost when hugeness will shut
quietly)almost,
your kiss

[Saffron]

Unrequited Love --

Abraham Cowley:

"A mighty pain to love it is,
And 'tis a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pains, the greatest pain
It is to love, but love in vain."

Robert Burns' poem "Anna, Thy Charms" catches it succinctly:

"Anna, thy charms my bosom fire,
And waste my soul with care;
But ah! how bootless to admire,
When fated to despair!

Yet in thy presence, lovely Fair,
To hope may be forgiven;
For sure 'twere impious to despair
So much in sight of heaven."

Alfred Edward Housman wrote a poem inspired by his life-long unrequited love for his best friend Moses Jackson:

"He would not stay for me, and who can wonder?
He would not stay for me to stand and gaze.
I shook his hand and tore my heart in sunder
And went with half my life about my ways."

[Saffron]

A favorite activity, and I am always grateful when life affords me the time, is to chase from one word/idea to the next, following a scarlet thread, that turns to indigo, to emerald, that only I can see -- stitching them into something new and useful (or maybe just for my amusement). The internet has revolutionize this little game of mine. I keep thinking how fun it would be to have a website that I could map out my journeys with links, words and images. This morning's tour led me to Ravi Shankar's poem about winter -- the last 2 stanza (which I will come back to) somehow sent me to a bio of William Carlos Williams, a favorite poet of mine -- to his poem (new to me) A Love Song -- here is the 2nd stanza:

The stain of love
Is upon the world.
Yellow, yellow, yellow,
It eats into the leaves,
Smears with saffron
The horned branches that lean
Heavily
Against a smooth purple sky.

I was delighted that the color of love is saffron!

Now, back to Shankar - the last two stanza of his poem, "From December to February."

denied its radiant cradle and suspended a steely scythe.

But we who were born in this season have learned the myths

of its severity, its impervious heart. We will walk

by the river and into the night together. After all, we were


once the infants suited for this frosted earth and frozen air.

We became the children who accepted the chilblains of their own

creations, their small arms feathered with soft flakes, their bodies

lying in an imitation of angels, as ours lie in another shape.



I have always loved winter, as a girl it was my favorite season. I have always attributed my love of winter to the fact that my birthday is Feb. 12th. My mom, has told me that she would bundle me up, put me in the carriage and park me on the front porch for "air." Who knew that infants need "air." Somehow, I figure all that frosty air fortified me, body and soul.

[Saffron]

Must make one last comment on the Williams poem -- here's the stanza, with attention to the last line:

I am alone.
The weight of love
Has buoyed me up
Till my head
Knocks against the sky.


Hell of a line, don't you think? Haven't you been just there? I love it!