Category Archives: love

“Love is Not All” (Sonnet XXX) by Edna St. Vincent Millay [w/ Audio]

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Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
 Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
 Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
 And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
 Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
 Yet many a man is making friends with death
 Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
 Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
 Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
 I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
 It well may be. I do not think I would.

“Hand in Hand” by Su Shi [w/ Audio]

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Hand in hand.
 Plum petals floated to her skirt.
   -- Love unbound --
 Now, lost souls mill about:
 Thier loved ones long unseen.
 Old songs are heard once more,
   Recalling Tower and Temple.

On ordinary days,
 I'd write a thousand lines.
   Now, I brush away dust,
      And think of us, together.
 The moon reflects in the lake.
 Willows droop beside water.
 A dragon-head cloud drifts on air.

Note: Translated titles vary. e.g. Xu Yuanchong entitles his translation “Song of Incense.”

Sonnet 104 by William Shakespeare [w/ Audio]

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To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
   For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
   Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
   Have from the forests shook three summer's pride,
 Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned
   In process of the seasons have I seen,
   Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
   Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
 Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
   Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;
   So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
   Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived: 
 For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:
   Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.

“The Cross of Snow” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [w/ Audio]

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In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
 A gentle face -- the face of one long dead --
 Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
 The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died; and soul more white
 Never through martyrdom of fire was led
 To its repose; nor can in books be read
 The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
 That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
 Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
 These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
 And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

“A Quoi Bon Dire” by Charlotte Mew [w/ Audio]

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Seventeen years ago you said
 Something that sounded like Good-bye;
 And everybody thinks that you are dead,
   But I.

So I, as I grow stiff and cold
 To this and that say Good-bye too;
 And everybody sees that I am old
   But you.

And one fine morning in a sunny lane
 Some boy and girl will meet and kiss and swear
 That nobody can love their way again
    While over there
 You will have smiled, I shall have tossed your hair.

BOOKS: “How to Love in Sanskrit” Trans. by Anusha Rao & Suhas Mahesh

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How to Love in SanskritHow to Love in Sanskrit by Anusha Rao
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

As one can tell from the title and cover, this is an anthology of poems translated from Sanskrit to English on the subject of love, relationships, and eroticism. The source poems come from a diverse collection of writings.

The translators made an editorial / translation decision to place the translations in a modern context. By that I mean that the poems, most of which were written hundreds of years ago, have references to cell phones and dating apps, as well as many colloquialisms and expressions du jour. Some readers will love how this makes it readable and relatable in the present-day. Others will find that it distracts and takes one out of the experience of reading classical literature. I’m not saying the decision is good or bad, but it is something of which a potential reader should be aware. The only critical comment I have on the matter is that, if you should be reading the book ten years from now, there will likely be both language and technical references that have not aged well, and which you will probably have to go to your AI historian to figure out. (Some expressions are cliched now.)

I did enjoy how much ground the collection covered. The poems are grouped into categories sticking to the “How To” motif of the book, e.g. “How to Flirt,” “How to Yearn,” etc. I will say I went through a period early in the reading in which it seemed like poem after poem was confusing teeny-bopper lust for love, seemingly celebrating pathologies like jealousy and co-dependence. Throughout this phase of the book there were a number of poems that read like bad schoolboy poetry. However, in later chapters there were more poems that were dignified and reflected a more mature grasp of the subject.

There were some features of the book that I loved. First of all, most of the poems have explanatory notes at the end that can be very helpful both because (as mentioned) most of the poems were written long ago and because I am a foreign reader. Secondly, there is an appendix with romanizations of the original Sanskrit.

Ultimately, I’d say a major factor in whether this anthology is for you will be whether you enjoy the colloquial tone and free verse form or find it off-putting.

View all my reviews

“Memory” by William Butler Yeats [w/ Audio]

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One had a lovely face,
   And two or three had charm,
   But charm and face were in vain
 Because the mountain grass
   Cannot but keep the form
   Where the mountain hare has lain.

“Retort” by Paul Laurence Dunbar [w/ Audio]

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"Thou art a fool," said my head to my heart,
 "Indeed, the greatest of fools thou art,
 To be led astray by the trick of a tress,
 By a smiling face or a ribbon smart;"
 And my heart was in sore distress.
 Then Phyllis came by, and her face was fair,
 The light gleamed soft on her raven hair;
 And her lips were blooming a rosy red.
 Then my heart spoke out with a right bold air:
 "Thou art worse than a fool, O head!"

“Meeting at Night” by Robert Browning [w/ Audio]

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I
The grey sea and the long black land;
 And the yellow half-moon large and low;
 And the startled little waves that leap
 In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
 As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
 And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

II
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
 Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
 A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
 And blue spurt of a lighted match,
 And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
 Than the two hearts beating each to each!

“The Night Has a Thousand Eyes” by Francis William Bourdillon [w/ Audio]

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The night has a thousand eyes,
 And the day but one;
 Yet the light of the bright world dies
 With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
 And the heart but one:
 Yet the light of a whole life dies
 When love is done.