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...
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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... -
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... -
I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow... -
Ô Papillon si j’étais toi
Que j’eusse puissance de Roi
Sur l’odorante fleur qui naît ou meurt sous moi, ─N’arrêterais certes mon aile
Sur une fleur qui n’est que belle,
Mon amour serait pour la pensée immortelle.Dame Abeille si comme toi
Pouvais creuser... -
“One name is Elizabeth.”
—BEN JONSON.I WILL paint her as I see her.
Ten times have the lilies blown
Since she looked upon the sun.And her face is lily-clear,
Lily-shaped, and dropped in duty
To the law of its own beauty.Oval cheeks encolored faintly,
Which a trail of golden hair
Keeps from... -
LITTLE Ellie sits alone
Mid the beeches of a meadow,
By a stream-side on the grass,
And the trees are showering down
Doubles of their leaves in shadow,
On her shining hair and face.She has thrown her bonnet by,
And her feet she has been dipping
In the shallow water’s flow.
Now she holds them nakedly... -
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore,…
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us... -
If thou must love me, let it be for naught
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,—... -
I Never gave a lock of hair away
To a man, Dearest, except this to thee,
Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully
I ring out to the full brown length and say
“Take it.” My day of youth went yesterday;
My hair no longer bounds to my foot’s glee.
Nor plant I it from rose or myrtle tree,
As girls do, any more. It only may
Now shade on...