O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death!
I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.
A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head: Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished: For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone. Kindness in another’s trouble, Courage in your own.
A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber’d here While these visions did appear.
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
Don’t surrender your loneliness so quickly. Let it cut you more deeply. Let it ferment and season you as few human and even divine ingredients can. Something missing in my heart tonight has made my eyes so soft, my voice so tender, my need for God absolutely clear.
A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I do not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.
You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.
To err is human; to forgive, divine.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.
Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.
Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye, in every gesture dignity and love.
For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
All days are nights to see till I see thee, And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.