When Love Comes Singing To His Heart – Sara Teasdale

When Love comes singing to his heart
That would not wake for me,
I think that I shall know his joy
By my own ecstasy.

And tho’ the sea were all between,
The time their hands shall meet,
My heart will know his happiness,
So wildly it will beat.

And when he bends above her mouth,
Rejoicing for his sake,
My soul will sing a little song,
But oh, my heart will break.

Possession – Ella Wheeler Wilcox

That which we had we still possess,
Though leaves may drop and stars may fall;
No circumstance can make it less,
Or take it from us, all in all.

That which is lost we did not own;
We only held it for a day—
A leaf by careless breezes blown;
No fate could take our own away.

I hold it as a changeless law
From which no soul can sway or swerve,
We have that in us which will draw
Whate’er we need or most deserve.

Even as the magnet to the steel
Our souls are to our best desires;
The Fates have hearts and they can feel—
They know what each true life requires.

We think we lose when we most gain;
We call joys ended ere begun;
When stars fade out do skies complain,
Or glory in the rising sun?

No fate could rob us of our own—
No circumstance can make it less;
What time removes was but a loan,
For what was ours we still possess.

Fighting Words – Dorothy Parker

Say my love is easy had,
Say I’m bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad—
Still behold me at your side.

Say I’m neither brave nor young,
Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue—
Still you have my heart to wear.

But say my verses do not scan,
And I get me another man!

Make Believe – Alice Cary

KISS me, though you make believe;
Kiss me, though I almost know
You are kissing to deceive:
Let the tide one moment flow
Backward ere it rise and break,
Only for poor pity’s sake!

Give me of your flowers one leaf,
Give me of your smiles one smile,
Backward roll this tide of grief
Just a moment, though, the while,
I should feel and almost know
You are trifling with my woe.

Whisper to me sweet and low;
Tell me how you sit and weave
Dreams about me, though I know
It is only make believe!
Just a moment, though ’tis plain
You are jesting with my pain.

My Papa’s Waltz – Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

Caught In A Net – Vachel Lindsay

Upon her breast her hands and hair
Were tangled all together.
The moon of June forbade me not—
The golden night time weather
In balmy sighs commanded me
To kiss them like a feather.

Her looming hair, her burning hands,
Were tangled black and white.
My face I buried there. I pray—
So far from her to-night—
For grace, to dream I kiss her soul
Amid the black and white.

To – Percy Bysshe Shelley

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

Faces – Sara Teasdale

People that I meet and pass
In the city’s broken roar,
Faces that I lose so soon
And have never found before,

Do you know how much you tell
In the meeting of our eyes,
How ashamed I am, and sad
To have pierced your poor disguise?

Secrets rushing without sound
Crying from your hiding places —
Let me go, I cannot bear
The sorrow of the passing faces.

— People in the restless street,
Can it be, oh can it be
In the meeting of our eyes
That you know as much of me?

Ways of Keeping – Finuala Dowling

I have kept my love for you
like an unloved dog,
chained up in the yard.

You have kept your love for me
pressed between
pages of a well-loved book.

With a diamond, secretly, you have
etched me into a glass pane,
showing me my hiding place
with a cupped hand.

I could teach the world to woo
but teach me to keep as you do.

The Jealous Gods – Ella Wheeler Wilcox

‘Oh life is wonderful,’ she said,
‘And all my world is bright;
Can Paradise show fairer skies,
Or more effulgent light?’
(Speak lower, lower, mortal heart,
The jealous gods may hear.)

She turned for answer; but his gaze
Cut past her like a lance,
And shone like flame on one who came
With radiant glance for glance.
(You spoke too loud, O mortal heart,
The jealous gods were near.)

They walked through green and sunlit ways;
And yet the earth seemed black,
For there were three, where two should be;
So runs the world, alack.
(The listening gods, the jealous gods,
They want no Edens here.)