Poetry Corner: John Donne

Air And Angels

Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,
Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be;
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is,
Love must not be, but take a body too;
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid love ask, and now
That it assume thy body I allow,
And fix itself to thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught
Every thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere.
Then as an angel, face and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
So thy love may be my love's sphere.
Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air and angel's purity,
'Twixt women's love and men's will ever be.

John Donne

Poetry Corner: Andrew Marvell

The Definition Of Love by Andrew Marvell

My love is of a birth as rare

As 'tis for object strange and high:

It was begotten by Despair

Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone

Could show me so divine a thing,

Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown

But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive

Where my extended soul is fixed

But Fate does iron wedges drive,

And always crowds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eye does see

Two perfect loves, nor lets them close:

Their union would her ruin be,

And her tyrranic power depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel

Us as the distant Poles have placed

(Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel)

Not by themselves to be embraced,

Unless the giddy heaven fall,

And earth some new convulsion tear;

And, us to join, the world should all

Be cramped into a planisphere.

As lines (so loves) oblique may well

Themselves in every angle greet:

But ours so truly parallel,

Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,

But Fate so enviously debars,

Is the conjunction of the mind,

And opposition of the stars.

Poetry Corner: Kerry Bowden

I believe

In flowers,

sunshine,

pots of gold at the end of the rainbow,

magic,

fate,

aliens,

and

kindred souls.

I believe.

In fiction everything is possible.

In order for a story to be labeled a romance, it MUST have a happy ending.

What do you believe in?

Poetry Corner: Lucy Maud Montgomery

November Evening

by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Come, for the dusk is our own; let us fare forth together,

With a quiet delight in our hearts for the ripe, still, autumn weather,

Through the rustling valley and wood and over the crisping meadow,

Under a high-sprung sky, winnowed of mist and shadow.

Sharp is the frosty air, and through the far hill-gaps showing

Lucent sunset lakes of crocus and green are glowing;

'Tis the hour to walk at will in a wayward, unfettered roaming,

Caring for naught save the charm, elusive and swift, of the gloaming.

Watchful and stirless the fields as if not unkindly holding

Harvested joys in their clasp, and to their broad bosoms folding

Baby hopes of a Spring, trusted to motherly keeping,

Thus to be cherished and happed through the long months of their sleeping.

Silent the woods are and gray; but the firs than ever are greener,

Nipped by the frost till the tang of their loosened balsam is keener;

And one little wind in their boughs, eerily swaying and swinging,

Very soft and low, like a wandering minstrel is singing.

Beautiful is the year, but not as the springlike maiden

Garlanded with her hopes­rather the woman laden

With wealth of joy and grief, worthily won through living,

Wearing her sorrow now like a garment of praise and thanksgiving.

Gently the dark comes down over the wild, fair places,

The whispering glens in the hills, the open, starry spaces;

Rich with the gifts of the night, sated with questing and dreaming,

We turn to the dearest of paths where the star of the homelight is gleaming.

Poetry Corner: Ogden Nash

The Porcupine

Any hound a porcupine nudges

Can't be blamed for harboring grudges.

I know one hound that laughed all winter

At a porcupine that sat on a splinter.

By Ogden Nash

Sallie says: "Cheer up! There are worse things

that can happen."

Poetry Corner: Veronica A. Shoffstall

Comes The Dawn

After awhile you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul

And you learn that love doesn't mean leaving and company doesn't always mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts and presents aren't promises

And you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes ahead

with the grace of a woman , not the grief of a child

And you learn to build all your roads on today

because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans

and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After awhile you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much.

So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul.

instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure

that you really are strong

and you really do have worth

And you learn and you learn

with every goodbye you learn...

Veronica A. Shoffstall

Poetry Corner: Edgar Allan Poe (Part 1)

Romance

Romance, who loves to nod and sing,

With drowsy head and folded wing,

Among the green leaves as they shake

Far down within some shadowy lake,

To me a painted paroquet

Hath been--a most familiar bird--

Taught me my alphabet to say--

to lisp my very earliest word

While in the wild wood I did lie,

A child--With a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal Condor years

So shake the very Heaven on high

With tumult as they thunder by,

I have no time for idle cares

Through gazing on the unquiet sky.

And when an hour with calmer wings

Its down upon my spirit flings--

That little time with lyre and rhyme

To while away--forbidden things!

My heart would feel to be a crime

Unless it trembled with the strings.

Edgar Allan Poe

Poetry Corner: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

One of Dawn's favorite poets is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The other day she read a poem to me called "The Village Blacksmith."

"Toiling,--rejoicing,--sorrowing,

Onward through life he goes;

Each morning sees some task begun

Each evening sees it close;

Something attempted, something done,

Has earned a night's repose."