Tag Archives: Love Poetry

“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.

Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare [w/ Audio]

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Let me not to the marriage of true minds
 Admit impediments; love is not love
 Which alters when it alteration finds,
 Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixed mark
 That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
 It is the star to every wand'ring bark
 Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
 Within his bending sickle's compass come.
 Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
 But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
  If this be error and upon me proved,
  I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

“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.

Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare [w/ Audio]

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My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
 Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
 If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
 If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
 But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
 And in some perfumes there is more delight
 Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
 That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
 I grant I never saw a goddess go;
 My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
   And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
   As any she belied with false compare.

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.

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“Now Winter Nights Enlarge” by Thomas Campion [w/ Audio]

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Now winter nights enlarge
 The number of their hours;
 And clouds their storms discharge
 Upon the air towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze
 And cups o'erflow with wine,
 Let well-turned words amaze
 With harmony divine.
Now yellow waxen lights
 Shall wait on honey love
 While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights
 Sleep's leaden spells remove.

This time doth well dispense
 With lovers' long discourse; 
 Much speech hath some defense,
 Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well;
 Some measures comely tread,
 Some knotted riddles tell,
 Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys,
 And winter his delights;
 Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
 They shorten tedious nights.

“He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” by William Butler Yeats [w/ Audio]

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Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
 Enwrought with the golden and silver light,
 The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
 Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
 But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
 I have spread my dreams under your feet;
 Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

NOTE: This poem is also sometimes entitled, “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven.”

“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.