Date Posted:20:01:05 04/10/10 Sat Author:Page Subject: Page's faves >>>> In reply to:
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's message, "April is Poetry Month" on 19:47:57 04/10/10 Sat
I consider two poems to be my very favorites ever, and would like to share them with you.
The first is only part of a very, very long and epic poem called Grass of Parnassus written by a man called Andrew Lang. The part I love best is entitled Another Way:
Come to me in my dreams, and then,
One saith, I shall be well again,
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.
Nay, come not thou in dreams, my sweet,
With shadowy robes, and silent feet,
And with the voice, and with the eyes
That greet me in a soft surprise.
Last night, last night, in dreams we met,
And how, to-day, shall I forget,
Or how, remembering, restrain
Mine incommunicable pain?
Nay, where thy land and people are,
Dwell thou remote, apart, afar,
Nor mingle with the shapes that sweep
The melancholy ways of Sleep.
But if, perchance, the shadows break,
If dreams depart, if men awake,
If face to face at length we see,
Be thine the voice to welcome me.
And my very favorite poem ever is this one by Dante Rossetti. It's called Sudden Light. Rossetti wrote two different ending stanzas, but I like the first one written in 1863 and published in 1870 the best, so that's the one I'm posting here.
I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before,—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.
Then, now,—perchance again! . . . .
O round mine eyes your tresses shake!
Shall we not lie as we have lain
Thus for Love's sake,
And sleep, and wake, yet never break the chain?
The other ending stanza written in 1881 is: Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?
>Nay, where thy land and people are,
>Dwell thou remote, apart, afar,
>Nor mingle with the shapes that sweep
>The melancholy ways of Sleep.
>
>But if, perchance, the shadows break,
>If dreams depart, if men awake,
>If face to face at length we see,
>Be thine the voice to welcome me.
>
I LOVE that last stanza...
> You have been mine before,—
> How long ago I may not know:
> But just when at that swallow's soar
> Your neck turned so,
> Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.
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