Bee

Affection is Not Love ________________________ Conceit, begotten by the eyes, Is quickly born and quickly dies; For while it seeks our hearts to have, Meanwhile, there reason makes his grave; For many things the eyes approve, Which yet the heart doth seldom love. For as the seeds in spring time sown Die in the ground ere they be grown, Such is conceit, whose rooting fails, As child that in the cradle quails; Or else within the mother's womb Hath his beginning and his tomb. Affection follows Fortune's wheels, And soon is shaken from her heels; For, following beauty or estate, Her liking still is turned to hate; For all affections have their change, And fancy only loves to range. Desire himself runs out of breath, And, getting, doth but gain his death: Desire nor reason hath nor rest, And, blind, doth seldom choose the best: Desire attained is not desire, But as the cinders of the fire. As ships in ports desired are drowned, As fruit, once ripe, then falls to ground, As...

My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is _________________________________ My mind to me a kingdom is, Such present joys therein I find, That it excels all other bliss That earth affords or grows by kind: Though much I want which most would have, Yet still my mind forbids to crave. No princely pomp, no wealthy store, No force to win the victory, No wily wit to salve a sore, No shape to feed a loving eye; To none of these I yield as thrall: For why? My mind doth serve for all. I see how plenty surfeits oft, And hasty climbers soon do fall; I see that those which are aloft Mishap doth threaten most of all; They get with toil, they keep with fear; Such cares my mind could never bear. Content I live, this is my stay, I seek no more than may suffice, I press to bear no haughty sway; Look, what I lack my mind supplies. Lo, thus I triumph like a king, Content with that my mind doth bring. Some have too much, yet still do crave, I little have, and seek no more: They are but poor, ...

________________________ ______________________________ _____ FROM off a hill whose concave womb reworded A plaintful story from a sistering vale, My spirits to attend this double voice accorded, And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale; Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale, Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain, Storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain. Upon her head a platted hive of straw, Which fortified her visage from the sun, Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw The carcass of beauty spent and done: Time had not scythed all that youth begun, Nor youth all quit; but, spite of heaven's fell rage, Some beauty peep'd through lattice of sear'd age. Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne, Which on it had conceited characters, Laundering the silken figures in the brine That season'd woe had pelleted in tears, And often reading what contents it bears; As often shrieking undistinguish'd woe, In clamours of all size, both high and low. S...

A Riddle ************ ************ _____________________ |_____________________| You say I am a riddle – it may be For all of us are riddles unexplained. Begun in pain, in deeper torture ended, This breathing clay what business has it here? Some petty wants to chain us to the Earth, Some lofty thoughts to lift us to the spheres, And cheat us with that semblance of a soul To dream of Immortality, till Time O’er empty visions draws the closing veil, And a new life begins – the life of worms, Those hungry plunderers of the human breast. For this Hope dwindles as we fathom Truth: Forgotten to forget – and is that all? To-day a man, with power to act and feel, A mirror of the Universe, wherein Creation’s centred rays combine to form The focus of Intelligence; to-day A heart so deeply loving that it seems As if that band uniting soul to soul, Were but Religion in a brighter form; To-day all this – to-morrow a cold corpse, A something worse than clay which stinks and rots. Kind hands may stre...

SONNET 29 ____________ When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. ________________________________________ William SHakespeare ___________________________

THE GENESIS OF BUTTERFLIES Victor Hugo _____________________________________ The dawn is smiling on the dew that covers The tearful roses; lo, the little lovers That kiss the buds, and all the flutterings In jasmine bloom, and privet, of white wings, That go and come, and fly, and peep and hide, With muffled music, murmured far and wide. Ah, the Spring time, when we think of all the lays That dreamy lovers send to dreamy mays, Of the fond hearts within a billet bound, Of all the soft silk paper that pens wound, The messages of love that mortals write Filled with intoxication of delight, Written in April and before the May time Shredded and flown, playthings for the wind's playtime, We dream that all white butterflies above, Who seek through clouds or waters souls to love, And leave their lady mistress in despair, To flit to flowers, as kinder and more fair, Are but torn love-letters, that through the skies Flutter, and float, and change to butterflies. ***

______________________________________________ What smouldering senses in death's sick delay Or seizure of malign vicissitude Can rob this body of honour, or denude This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day? For lo! even now my lady's lips did play With these my lips such consonant interlude As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay. I was a child beneath her touch,--a man When breast to breast we clung, even I and she,-- A spirit when her spirit looked through me,-- A god when all our life-breath met to fan Our life-blood, till love's emulous ardours ran, Fire within fire, desire in deity. _____________________________________ Dante Gabriel Rossetti ___________________________