Tag Archives: romance

Deep in a Vale

nature, poetry, , ,

DEEP IN A VALE

Deep in a vale where rocks on every side
Shut out the winds, and scarcely let the sun
Between them dart his rays down one by one,
Where all was still and cool in summer-tide,
And softly, with her whispering waves that sighed,
A little river, that had scarce begun
Her silver course, made bold to fleet and run
Down leafy falls to woodlands dense and wide,
There stood a tiny plain, just large enow
To give small mountain-folk right room to dance,
With oaks and limes and maples ringed around;
Hither I came, and viewed its turf askance,
Its solitude with beauty seemed a-glow,—
My Love had walked there and ’twas holy ground!
-Gustaf Rosenhane (1619–1684) Sweden
        Translated by Edmund Gosse
Van Gogh, The Poet’s Garden

The music of star-shine and Romance.

poetry, ,

ROMANCE

I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.
I will make a palace fit for you and me,
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.

I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,
Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom,
And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white
In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.

And this shall be for music when no one else is near
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.

-Robert Louis Stevenson

Goran Vojinovic, Vlasina stars

 

Eyes kissed open.

beauty, poetry, , ,

VISION

Today there have been lovely things
I never saw before;
sunlight through a jar of marmalade;
a blue gate;
a rainbow
in soapsuds on dishwater;
candlelight on butter;
the crinkled smile of a little girl
who had new shoes with tassels;
a chickadee on a thorn-apple;
empurpled mud under a willow,
where white geese slept;
white ruffled curtains sifting moonlight
on the scrubbed kitchen floor;
the under-side of a white-oak leaf;
ruts in the road at sunset;
an egg yolk in a blue bowl.

My love kissed my eyes last night.

-May Thielgaard Watts

Murnau with Rainbow – Wassily Kandinsky

They’d embrace like parallel lines.

humor, poetry, ,

JOHN & MARY

John & Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
………–From a Freshman’s Short Story

They were like gazelles who occupied different
grassy plains, running in opposite directions
from different lions. They were like postal clerks
in different zip codes, with different vacation time,
their bosses adamant and clock-driven.
How could they get together?
They were like two people who couldn’t get together.
John was a Sufi with a love of the dervish,
Mary of course a Christian with a curfew.
They were like two dolphins in the immensity
of the Atlantic, one playful,
the other stuck in a tuna net —
two absolutely different childhoods!
There was simply no hope for them.
They would never speak in person.
When they ran across that windswept field
toward each other, they were like two freight trains,
one having left Seattle at 6:36 p.m.
at an unknown speed, the other delayed
in Topeka for repairs.
The math indicated that they’d embrace
in another world, if at all, like parallel lines.
Or merely appear kindred and close, like stars.

-Stephen Dunn