Blue Roses - Rudyard Kipling

Roses red and roses white
Plucked I for my love’s delight.
She would none of all my posies–
Bade me gather her blue roses.

Half the world I wandered through,
Seeking where such flowers grew.
Half the world unto my quest
Answered me with laugh and jest.

Home I came at wintertide,
But my silly love had died
Seeking with her latest breath
Roses from the arms of Death.

It may be beyond the grave
She shall find what she would have.
Mine was but an idle quest–
Roses white and red are best!

Just Think – Robert Service

Just think! some night the stars will gleam
Upon a cold, grey stone,
And trace a name with silver beam,
And lo! ‘twill be your own.

This night is speeding on to greet
Your epitaphic rhyme.
You life is but a little beat
Within the heart of Time.

A little gain, a little pain,
A laugh, lest you may moan;
A little blame, a little flame,
A star-gleam on a stone.

Grief - Philip Larkin

If grief could burn out
Like a sunken coal
The heart would rest quiet
The unrent soul
Be as still as a veil
But I have watched all night

The fire grow silent
The grey ash soft
And I stir the stubborn flint
The flames have left
And the bereft
Heart lies impotent

The Arrow And the Song – HW Longfellow

I shot the arrow in the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

The Sick Rose - William Blake

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm.
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

somewhere i have never travelled… (LVII) - ee cummings

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 easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, misteriously) 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 we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour 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

“Life is Bitter…” - William E Henley

Life is bitter. All the faces of the years,
Young and old, are gray with travail and with tears.
Must we only wake to toil, to tire, to weep?
In the sun, among the leaves, upon the flowers,
Slumber stills to dreamy death the heavy hours …
Let me sleep.

Riches won but mock the old, unable years;
Fame’s a pearl that hides beneath a sea of tears;
Love must wither, or must live alone and weep.
In the sunshine, through the leaves, across the flowers,
While we slumber, death approaches through the hours …
Let me sleep.

Labyrinth - Jared Carter

Somewhere within the murmuring of things
that make no difference—aimlessly playing,
drifting in the wind—a loose door swings,

banging against a wall; the piece of string
that held it shut has blown away. Delaying,
somewhere within the murmuring of things,

crickets and tree toads pause, listening;
now they go on with their shrill surveying.
Drifting in the wind, a loose door swings

in widening arcs. Each rusty iron hinge
creaks in a different key: each is decaying,
somewhere within. The murmuring of things

wells up—the quickening thrum of wings,
the pulsing, intersecting voice swaying,
drifting in the wind. A loose door swings;

no torch, no adventitious thread brings
meaning to this maze, this endless straying
somewhere within the murmuring of things.
Drifting in the wind, a loose door swings.

I Saw Thee Weep - GG Byron

I saw thee weep – the big bright tear
Came o’er that eye of blue;
And then methought it did appear
A violet dropping dew:
I see thee smile – the sapphire’s blaze
Beside thee ceased to shine;
It could not match the living rays
That filled that glance of thine.

As clouds from yonder sun receive
A deep and mellow dye,
Which scarce the shade of coming eve
Can banish from the sky,
Those smiles unto the moodiest mind
Their own pure joy impart;
Their sunshine leaves a glow behind
That lightens o’er the heart.

Katherine – RL Stevenson

We see you as we see a face
That trembles in a forest place
Upon the mirror of a pool
Forever quiet, clear and cool;
And in the wayward glass, appears
To hover between smiles and tears,
Elfin and human, airy and true,
And backed by the reflected blue