It's Friday and I thought I'd share two of my best loved romantic poems for a change."Sonnet 43" expresses the poet’s intense love for her husband-to-be, Robert Browning. So intense is her love for him, she says, that it rises to the spiritual level (Lines 3 and 4). She loves him freely, without coercion; she loves him purely, without expectation of personal gain. She even loves him with an intensity of the suffering (passion: Line 9) resembling that of her Savior and she loves him in the way that she loved saints as a child. Moreover, she expects to continue to love him after death. Beautifully expressed.
This is what I always believe - that I love my beloved today more than yesterday but less than tomorrow because tomorrow I will love him more than today and even more than yesterday....May your life be filled with love, happiness and health always. Next post will be up at about 10p.m. Do swing by later.
Sonnet 43
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.
-written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning-
Sonnet 14
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love’s sake only. Do not say
“I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day”—
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou may’st love on, through love’s eternity.
-written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning-
-written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning-
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO ENDLESS LOVE BY LIONEL RITCHIE AND DIANA ROSS.
Grace Beck How I love the poems :)
Perhaps one day I will share mine with you...