Love is a universal migraine, A bright stain on the vision Blotting out reason. Symptoms of true love Are leanness, jealousy, Laggard dawns; Are omens and nightmares – Listening for a knock, Waiting for a sign: For a touch of her fingers In a darkened room, For a…

He fumbles at your Spirit As Players at the Keys Before they drop full Music on – He stuns you by degrees – Prepares your brittle Nature For the Ethereal Blow By fainter Hammers – further heard – Then nearer – Then so slow Your Breath has…

I wish I could remember the first day, First hour, first moment of your meeting me, If bright or dim the season, it might be Summer or Winter for aught I can say. So unrecorded did it slip away, So blind was I to see and foresee, So dull to mark the budding of my tree…

Bright Star! would I were steadfast 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…

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no, it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering…

Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land; When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. Remember me when no more day by day You tell me of our future that you plann’d: Only remember me; you…

My heart has made its mind up And I’m afraid it’s you. Whatever you’ve got lined up, My heart has made its mind up And if you can’t be signed up This year, next year will do. My heart has made its mind up And I’m afraid it’s you….

When in the chronicle of wasted time I see descriptions of the fairest wights, And beauty making beautiful old rime In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights, Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, I see their…

Some men never think of it. You did. You’d come along And say you’d nearly brought me flowers But something had gone wrong. The shop was closed. Or you had doubts – The sort that minds like ours Dream up incessantly. You thought I might not want your…

She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellow’d to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, Had…

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 candlelight. I love…

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark clothes Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my…

Can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about his religion. Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and of service to your people. Prepare a…

Time is a wheel: the day that we met Is still there: Everything changes but nothing is lost All that we shared, All that we ever loved, belongs to us still: Time is a wheel Whatever has ended is just about to begin All that we feel, All that we ever felt, will come…

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue occan. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and…

Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so, For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow, Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure, then…

You can shed tears that she is gone or you can smile because she has lived. You can close your eyes and pray that she’ll come back or you can open your eyes and see all she’s left. Your heart can be empty because you can’t see her or you can be fully…

In a circle of friends, the one who dies first is the friend you will never forget: this is the death that unhinges you from the trappings of everyday life and makes you – suddenly – absurdly grateful for each new breath – beginning with this one….

We are not dovetailed but opened to each other So that our edges blur, and to and fro A little wind-borne trade plies, filtering over, Bartering our atoms when fair breezes blow. Though, not like waters met and inter-running, Our peoples dwell each under different…

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;…

Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory; Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heap’d for the beloved’s bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on….

This was a life That had hardly begun No time to find Your place in the sun No time to do All you could have done But we loved you enough for a lifetime. No time to enjoy The world and its wealth No time to take life Down off the shelf No time to sing The song of…

Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die. I have sent up my gladness on wings, to be lost in the blue of the sky. I have run and leaped with the rain, I have taken the wind to my breast. My cheek like a drowsy child to the face of the earth I…

Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality. We slowly drove – He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility – We passed the…

Then Almitra spoke, saying, We would ask now of Death. And he said: You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life? The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light. If you…

don’t tell me that I mourn too much and I won’t tell you that you mourn too much don’t tell me that I mourn too little and I won’t tell you that you mourn too little don’t tell me that I mourn in the wrong place and I won’t tell you…

While I slept, while I slept and the night grew colder She would come to my room, stepping softly And draw a blanket about my shoulder While I slept. While I slept, while I slept in the dark, still heat She would come to my bedside, stepping coolly And smooth and…

The greatest griefs shall find themselves inside the smallest cage It’s only then that we can hope to tame their rage, The monsters we must live with. For it will not do To hiss humanity because one human threw Us out of heart and home. Or part At odds with life…

Are yours to keep I have found my rest; I have turned my face To the sun, and now I sleep.  – Alan Curtis (1959-)

When I have fears, as Keats had fears, Of the moment I’ll cease to be I console myself with vanished years Remembered laughter, remembered tears, And the peace of the changing sea. When I feel sad, as Keats felt sad, That my life is so nearly done It gives me…

Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and a quiet breathing. Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing A flowery band to bind us to the earth, Spite the…

The song of the wind in the tree The hang and heave of the sea The cry of a bird on the wing This is my legacy. The sun on a frosting of dew The rain when it comes on cue The greening and the shining I leave all this to you.  – Sarah-Jane Brooks (1963-)

Now I know what is meant by death – A leavetaking In one way, in another A kind of waking. The old world almost gone your voices ringing in my ears like a distant echo barely clinging. The stones of the earth are warm and the grass is singing as I start down my…

On a day of rain when you sit indoors By the fire with a book, as I loved to do, And the storm wind roars Think of me then. As you walk by the shore when the sun is high And the sea is blue, as I loved to do, And the seagulls cry Think of me then. When you’re…

I’m coming back on All Saints’ Day for your olives, old peanuts and dodgy sherry, dirty dancing. I’ll cross-dress at last pirouette and flash, act pissed. You’ll have to look for me hard: search for my bones in the crowd. Or lay a pint and a…

Perhaps if Death is kind, and there can be returning, We will come back to earth some fragrant night, And take these lanes to find the sea, and bending Breathe the same honeysuckle, low and white. We will come down at night to these resounding beaches And the long…

I have desired to go Where springs not fail, To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail And a few lilies blow.   And I have asked to be Where no storms come, Where the green swell in the havens dumb, And out of the swing of the sea.   – Gerard…

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous places, The solemn temples, the great glove itself, Yea,…