This is still one of my all time favourite love poems.The imagery and the words move me. Does anyone else have one they love?

e e cummings

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new


More from

e e cummings here

Funny, that. My favourite love poem is also from ee. It has been taking my breath away for two of my three decades now. Do you have small hands?

dp

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Ah Ms Penguin, thank you, thank you. Too beautiful. I didn't know that one. Moved me and yes it does take your breath away. I love the imagery and the precision of his words. I want to read them over and over. And yes I have small hands. You may like this one too...



i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Indeed, I do. ee has a way of placing words upon the page as though they were thoughts, direct from his mind to mine. A precision, as you say. I'm also very fond of some of the classics like Noyes' The Highwayman (from which I bear the middle name Bess), and Tennyson's The Lady of Shallot. By far my favourite poem of all time is Browning's My Last Duchess, however, which is more of an anti-love poem. It is riddled with the nasty and lasivious complexity of human nature. I like it a lot:

That's my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Fra Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
That depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 't was not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much" or "Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat:" such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart - how shall I say? - too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed: she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 't was all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace -all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush,at least. She thanked men - good! but thanked
Somehow - I know not how - as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech - (which I have not) - to make your will
Quite clear to such a one, and say, "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss
Or there exceed the mark"- and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse
- E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me.

dp, I have a feeling we may have been twins seperated at birth! Just yesterday I was discussing My Last Duchess with a friend and Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress. I studied My Last Duchess a thousand years ago and still love it for all its sinister undertones. You can almost "hear" the swaggering rhythm of the narrator. One of the things I love about the net is the easy access to poems and discussion on poems. I liked this;
Discussion on My Last Duchess

I read poetry hungrily as a child, before I became enamoured with mathematics. I would pore through my mother's books (she never loved numbers) and understand little of what I read. The ones that sounded very pretty, breathtaking or naughty I would often commit to memory. At 10 or so I knew Fra Pandolf's name, but not his nuance. I was delighted when we studied more of him in grade 10, when I was also introduced more thoroughly to ee. I had never read Coy Mistress before, but I like it. Now that I'm immersed in my math, I wish I had more time for poetry. Have you ever read anything by the Canadian Earle Briney, of whom I am quite fond. And I are there any fine Aussie poets that I should know of?



dp

I'll look up Earle, I'm always on the lookout for new poets. This is a bit of an overview if you like Aust Poets.



I like Les Murray

Then there are the classic Aussie icons like Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson, lots of rollicking bush stories between them.



Banjo Patersons's Clancy Of the Overflow



I'm heading North for a fortnight, catch up with the poetry when we get back!

O Mistress Mine.

O Mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.

What is love? 'Tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies not plenty;
Then, come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.

by William Shakespeare

A VALEDICTION: FORBIDDING MOURNING
By John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant,
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assur�d of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

I agree with you on John Donne, Freddy. Here's another:

I wonder by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we lov'd? Were we not wean'd till then,
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the seven sleepers' den?
'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desir'd, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

And now good morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room, an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
Rumoresque senum severiorum
Omnes unius aestimemus assis.
Soles occidere et redire possunt ;
Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
Nox est perpetua una dormienda.
Da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein seconda centum,
Deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
…

Lets live, my Lesbia, lets love
Lets think nothing
Of all the envious gossip.
The suns can set and then rise again
But for us, when the brief light falls into the west
There is only one endless night to sleep
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred
Then a thousand more, then a another hundred,
Then again a thousand more, then one hundred….


Catullus, 1st century BC

I think you're neat,
I think you're sweet.
You make things stand,
That have no feet.

-Anonymous

Oh, you meant real poetry!

Sorry!

What about this one from the great Steve Dallas of "Bloom County"?

"In my dreams
You're all I sees,
Boobs, Butt, and Knees
Be my main squeeze."

If that doesn't get your juices flowing, then you need to check into a morgue!

Meeting at Night
by Robert Browning

I.

The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

II.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

The Best Thing in the World
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

What's the best thing in the world?
June-rose, by May-dew impearled;
Sweet south-wind, that means no rain;
Truth, not cruel to a friend;
Pleasure, not in haste to end;
Beauty, not self-decked and curled
Till its pride is over-plain;
Love, when, so, you're loved again.
What's the best thing in the world?
--Something out of it, I think.

February 14
by Jane Eaton Hamilton

Above me you turn like an acrobat
on blue string,
your feet small and accurate.
You are so far away.
My love is not enough to pull you
through the landscaped sky
to this night-wet garden.

It is February.
The bulbs are shooting,
the moon is slipping
dripping stars, hot and sticky.

I am not with you, this simple fact.
Here, I am alone,
climbinb from my underground incubatoin
calling your name
like dewdrop, crocus,
narcissus.
Tonguing the raw tender air.

I miss you. Here and now,
this moment, my body open just one way,
the way of the garden moving towards
morning, towards March,
June. Soon spring, that darling--
Soon you, marking every cell of me.



From, Steam-Cleaning Love (1993)

this is an old post, but had to share a few of my favorite e. e. cummings poems:


sometimes i am alive because with
me her alert treelike body sleeps
which i will feel slowly sharpening
becoming distinct with love slowly,
who in my shoulder sinks sweetly teeth
until we shall attain the Springsmelling
intense large togethercoloured instant

the moment pleasantly frightful

when, her mouth suddenly rising, wholly
begins with mine fiercely to fool
(and from my thighs which shrug and pant
a murdering rain leapingly reaches the upward
singular deepest flower which she
carries in a gesture of her hips)


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wild(at our first)beasts uttered human words
-our second coming made stones sing like birds-
but o the starhushed silence which our thirds

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