How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and heightMy soul can reach, when feeling out of sightFor the ends of being and ideal grace.I love thee to the level of every day'sMost 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 thee with the passion put to useIn my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.I love thee with a love I seemed to loseWith 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.
Just let me wait a little while longer,Under your window in the quite snow.Let me stand here and shiver, I’ll be stronger If I can see your light before I go.All through the weeks I’ve tried to keep my balance.Leaves fell, then rain, then shadows, I fell too.Easy restraint is not among my talents,Fall turned to Winter and I came to you.Kissed by the snow I contemplate your face.Oh, do not hide it in your pillow yet!Warm rooms would never lure me from this place,If only I could see your silhouette.Turn on your light, my sun, my summer love.Zero degrees down here, July above.
I don’t think that I’ve been in love as suchAlthough I liked a few folk pretty wellLove must be vaster than my smiles or touchfor brave men died and empires rose and fellFor love, girls follow boys to foreign landsand men have followed women into hellIn plays and poems someone understandsthere’s something makes us more than blood and boneand more than biological demands For me love’s like the wind, unseen, unknownI see the trees are bending where it’s beenI know that it leaves wreckage where it’s blownI really don’t know what "I love you" meansI think it means "don’t leave me here alone
Men call you fayre, and you doe credit it,For that your self ye daily such doe see:But the trew fayre, that is the gentle wit,And vertuous mind, is much more praysd of me.For all the rest, how ever fayre it be,Shall turne to nought and loose that glorious hew:But onely that is permanent and freeFrom frayle corruption, that doth flesh ensew.That is true beautie: that doth argue youTo be divine and borne of heavenly seed:Deriv'd from that fayre Spirit, from whom al trueAnd perfect beauty did at first proceed.He onely fayre, and what he fayre hath made,All other fayre lyke flowres untymely fade.
When I do count the clock that tells the time,And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;When I behold the violet past prime,And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;When lofty trees I see barren of leavesWhich erst from heat did canopy the herd,And summer's green all girded up in sheavesBorne on the bier with white and bristly beard,Then of thy beauty do I question make,That thou among the wastes of time must go,Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsakeAnd die as fast as they see others grow;And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defenceSave breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
I am, and that is all I know at times,My being shaped by forces known and not.But whereas words are made to bend to rhymes,My feet are bound to steps that I have wrought.I feel myself expanding into thisBeautiful niche I could not see beforeBut I always sensed-and now I cannot missMyself: I am unlimited and moreIs opening to me, the more I open To this sweet fear, like falling from a cloud,My heart's inertia clear and calm, unspokenBut heard. It says to me: "You are allowed."And I am free at last to feel this wayTo take this step: to wonder, love and stray.
Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is; Me it sucked first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be; Thou know’st that this cannot be said A sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead, Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pampered swells with one blood made of two, And this, alas, is more than we would do. Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare, Where we almost, nay more than married are. This flea is you and I, and this Our mariage bed and mariage temple is; Though parents grudge, and you, we are met, And cloisterd in these living walls of jet. Though use make you apt to kill me, Let not to that, self-murder added be, And sacrilege, three sins in killing three. Cruel and sudden, hast thou since Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence? Wherein could this flea guilty be, Except in that drop which it sucked from thee? Yet thou triumph’st, and say'st that thou Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now; ’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be: Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me, Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.
Disquite SonnetI wish that I could find the words to tellYou were it hurts; nothing breaking my skinSlices whispering in my brain like hellLeaking suggestions of a morose grinCannot collect my thoughts long enough toShare them in an understandable waySo I lock my lips firmly and walk throughLife, searching for the perfect words to sayTrapped in my head, I seek to be let outGrasping connections with those who might knowWhat it feels like, alone in a crowd, doubtFilling my body with reasons to goFace to face, I might not find the right phraseBut I hope someone hears me anyway
LXXVSo are you to my thoughts as food to life,Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground;And for the peace of you I hold such strifeAs 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found.Now proud as an enjoyer, and anonDoubting the filching age will steal his treasure;Now counting best to be with you alone,Then better'd that the world may see my pleasure:Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,And by and by clean starved for a look;Possessing or pursuing no delightSave what is had, or must from you be took. Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day, Or gluttoning on all, or all away.
My love is as a fever, longing stillFor that which longer nurseth the disease;Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,The uncertain sickly appetite to please.My reason, the physician to my love,Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,Hath left me, and I desperate now approve,Desire his death, which physic did except.Past cure I am, now reason is past care,And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,At random from the truth vainly express'd;For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
No longer mourn for me when I am deadthan you shall hear the surly sullen bell give warning to the world that I am fled from this vile world with vilest worms to dwell: nay, if you read this line, remember not the hand that writ it, for I love you so, that I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,if thinking on me then should make you woe. O! if, I say, you look upon this verse when I perhaps compounded am with clay, do not so much as my poor name rehearse; but let your love even with my life decay; lest the wise world should look into your moan, and mock you with me after I am gone.