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Showing posts from May, 2008

HOW DO I LOVE THEE ?

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)

Ogden Nash - You and Me and P.B. Shelley

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

Stevie Smith - Not Waving but Drowning

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.