Bee

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 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. **Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1770-1850)

You and Me and P.B. Shelley What is life? Life is stepping down a step or sitting in a chair. And it isn't there. Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor. Life is pulling doors marked PUSH and pushing doors marked PULL and not noticing notices which say PLEASE USE OTHER DOOR. It is when you diagnose a sore throat as an unprepared geography lesson and send your child weeping to school only to be returned an hour later covered with spots that are indubitable genuine. Life is a concert with a trombone soloist filling in for Yehudi Menuhin. But, were it not for frustration and humiliation I suppose the human race would get ideas above its station. Somebody once described Shelley as a beautiful and ineffective angel beating his luminous wings against the void in vain. Which is certainly describing with might and main. But probably means that we are all brothers under our pelts. And that Shelley went around pulling doors marked PUSH and pushing doors marked PUL...

Not Waving but Drowning Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he's dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said. Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.

THROUGH that pure virgin shrine, That sacred veil drawn o'er Thy glorious noon, That men might look and live, as glow-worms shine, And face the moon : Wise Nicodemus saw such light As made him know his God by night. Most blest believer he ! Who in that land of darkness and blind eyes Thy long-expected healing wings could see When Thou didst rise ! And, what can never more be done, Did at midnight speak with the Sun ! O who will tell me, where He found Thee at that dead and silent hour ? What hallow'd solitary ground did bear So rare a flower ; Within whose sacred leaves did lie The fulness of the Deity ? No mercy-seat of gold, No dead and dusty cherub, nor carv'd stone, But His own living works did my Lord hold And lodge alone ; Where trees and he...

In youth, it was a way I had To do my best to please, And change, with every passing lad, To suit his theories. But now I know the things I know, And do the things I do; And if you do not like me so, To hell, my love, with you! Dorothy Parker

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions. I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses And my history to the anaesthetist and my body to surgeons. They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut. Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in. The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble, They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps, Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another, So it is impossible to tell how many there are. My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently. They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep. Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage ---- My pat...

'The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.' I There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore; - Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. II The Rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the Rose, The Moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare; Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath past away a glory from the earth. III Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, And while the young lambs bound As to the tabor's sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief: A timely utterance g...