"I'd really love to see you tonight"

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 some 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.

edna st. vincent millay

I've always been moved by this sonnet's consideration of possible future loss.

These Foolish Things

A cigarette that bears the lipstick's traces,
An airline ticket to romantic places,
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things remind me of you.

A tinkling piano in the next apartment,
Those stumbling words that told you what my heart meant,
A fairground's painted swings,
These foolish things remind me of you.

You came, you saw,
You conquered me.
When you did that to me,
I knew somehow this had to be.

The winds of March that made my heart a dancer,
A telephone that rings,
But, who's to answer?
Oh how the ghost of you clings,
These foolish things remind me of you.

First daffodils and long excited cables,
And candle light on little corner tables,
And still my heart has wings,
These foolish things remind me of you.

The park at evening when the bell has sounded,
The Ile-de-France with all the gulls around it,
The beauty that is spring's
These foolish things remind me of you.

How strange, how sweet
To find you still,
These things are dear to me,
They seem to bring you near to me.

The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations,
Silk stockings tossed aside, dance invitations.
Oh, how the ghost of you clings!
These foolish things remind me of you.

(Strachey/Marvell/Link)

Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken?

(Lloyd Cole & The Commotions - from the album "Rattlesnakes")


looking like a born again
living like a heretic
listening to arthur lee records
making all your friends feel so guilty
about their cynicism
and the rest of their generation
not even the government are gonna stop you now
but are you ready to be heartbroken?
are you ready to be heartbroken?

pumped up full of vitamins
on account of all the seriousness
you say you're so happy now
you can hardly stand
lean over on the bookcase
if you really want to get straight
read norman mailer
or get a new tailor
are you ready to be heartbroken?
are you ready to be heartbroken?
are you ready to bleed?

what would it take
what would it take to wipe that smile off of your face?
are you ready to be, are you ready to bleed?
are you ready to be heartbroken?
are you ready to bleed? (heartbroken)
well you better get ready now baby
are you ready to bleed?, ready to bleed?

Ah! I was 16, and felt a love that was not to be!

Swinburne, one of my faves, waxed on endlessly about longing, as in this poem:

FÉLISE.
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?


WHAT shall be said between us here
Among the downs, between the trees,
In fields that knew our feet last year,
In sight of quiet sands and seas,
This year, Félise?


Who knows what word were best to say?
For last year's leaves lie dead and red
On this sweet day, in this green May,
And barren corn makes bitter bread.
What shall be said?


Here as last year the fields begin,
A fire of flowers and glowing grass;
The old fields we laughed and lingered in,
Seeing each our souls in last year's glass,
Félise, alas!


Shall we not laugh, shall we not weep,
Not we, though this be as it is?
For love awake or love asleep
Ends in a laugh, a dream, a kiss,
A song like this.


I that have slept awake, and you
Sleep, who last year were well awake.
Though love do all that love can do,
My heart will never ache or break
For your heart's sake.


The great sea, faultless as a flower,
Throbs, trembling under beam and breeze,
And laughs with love of the amorous hour.
I found you fairer once, Félise,
Than flowers or seas.


We played at bondsman and at queen;
But as the days change men change too;
I find the grey sea's notes of green,
The green sea's fervent flakes of blue,
More fair than you.


Your beauty is not over fair
Now in mine eyes, who am grown up wise.
The smell of flowers in all your hair
Allures not now; no sigh replies
If your heart sighs.


But you sigh seldom, you sleep sound,
You find love's new name good enough.
Less sweet I find it than I found
The sweetest name that ever love
Grew weary of.


My snake with bright bland eyes, my snake
Grown tame and glad to be caressed,
With lips athirst for mine to slake
Their tender fever! who had guessed
You loved me best?


I had died for this last year, to know
You loved me. Who shall turn on fate?
I care not if love come or go
Now, though your love seek mine for mate.
It is too late.


The dust of many strange desires
Lies deep between us; in our eyes
Dead smoke of perishable fires
Flickers, a fume in air and skies,
A steam of sighs.


You loved me and you loved me not;
A little, much, and overmuch.
Will you forget as I forget?
Let all dead things lie dead; none such
Are soft to touch.


I love you and I do not love,
Too much, a little, not at all:
Too much, and never yet enough.
Birds quick to fledge and fly at call
Are quick to fall.


And these love longer now than men,
And larger loves than ours are these.
No diver brings up love again
Dropped once, my beautiful Félise,
In such cold seas.


Gone deeper than all plummets sound,
Where in the dim green dayless day
The life of such dead things lies bound
As the sea feeds on, wreck and stray
And castaway.


Can I forget? yea, that can I,
And that can all men; so will you,
Alive, or later, when you die.
Ah, but the love you plead was true?
Was mine not too?


I loved you for that name of yours
Long ere we met, and long enough.
Now that one thing of all endures--
The sweetest name that ever love
Waxed weary of.


Like colours in the sea, like flowers,
Like a cat's splendid circled eyes
That wax and wane with love for hours,
Green as green flame, blue-grey like skies,
And soft like sighs--


And all these only like your name,
And your name full of all of these.
I say it, and it sounds the same--
Save that I say it now at ease,
Your name, Félise.


I said "she must be swift and white,
And subtly warm, and half perverse,
And sweet like sharp soft fruit to bite,
And like a snake's love lithe and fierce."
Men have guessed worse.


What was the song I made of you
Here where the grass forgets our feet
As afternoon forgets the dew?
Ah that such sweet things should be fleet,
Such fleet things sweet!


As afternoon forgets the dew,
As time in time forgets all men,
As our old place forgets us two,
Who might have turned to one thing then,
But not again.


O lips that mine have grown into
Like April's kissing May,
O fervent eyelids letting through
Those eyes the greenest of things blue,
The bluest of things grey,


If you were I and I were you,
How could I love you, say?
How could the roseleaf love the rue,
The day love nightfall and her dew,
Though night may love the day?


You loved it may be more than I;
We know not; love is hard to seize,
And all things are not good to try;
And lifelong loves the worst of these
For us, Félise.


Ah, take the season and have done,
Love well the hour and let it go:
Two souls may sleep and wake up one,
Or dream they wake and find it so,
And then--you know.


Kiss me once hard as though a flame
Lay on my lips and made them fire;
The same lips now, and not the same;
What breath shall fill and re-inspire
A dead desire?


The old song sounds hollower in mine ear
Than thin keen sounds of dead men's speech--
A noise one hears and would not hear;
Too strong to die, too weak to reach
From wave to beach.


We stand on either side the sea,
Stretch hands, blow kisses, laugh and lean
I toward you, you toward me;
But what hears either save the keen
Grey sea between?


A year divides us, love from love,
Though you love now, though I loved then.
The gulf is strait, but deep enough;
Who shall recross, who among men
Shall cross again?


Love was a jest last year, you said,
And what lives surely, surely dies.
Even so; but now that love is dead,
Shall love rekindle from wet eyes,
From subtle sighs?


For many loves are good to see;
Mutable loves, and loves perverse;
But there is nothing, nor shall be,
So sweet, so wicked, but my verse
Can dream of worse.


For we that sing and you that love
Know that which man may, only we.
The rest live under us; above,
Live the great gods in heaven, and see
What things shall be.


So this thing is and must be so;
For man dies, and love also dies.
Though yet love's ghost moves to and fro
The sea-green mirrors of your eyes,
And laughs, and lies.


Eyes coloured like a water-flower,
And deeper than the green sea's glass;
Eyes that remember one sweet hour--
In vain we swore it should not pass;
In vain, alas!


Ah my Félise, if love or sin,
If shame or fear could hold it fast,
Should we not hold it? Love wears thin,
And they laugh well who laugh the last.
Is it not past?


The gods, the gods are stronger; time
Falls down before them, all men's knees
Bow, all men's prayers and sorrows climb
Like incense towards them; yea, for these
Are gods, Félise.


Immortal are they, clothed with powers,
Not to be comforted at all;
Lords over all the fruitless hours;
Too great to appease, too high to appal,
Too far to call.


For none shall move the most high gods,
Who are most sad, being cruel; none
Shall break or take away the rods
Wherewith they scourge us, not as one
That smites a son.


By many a name of many a creed
We have called upon them, since the sands
Fell through time's hour-glass first, a seed
Of life; and out of many lands
Have we stretched hands.


When have they heard us? who hath known
Their faces, climbed unto their feet,
Felt them and found them? Laugh or groan,
Doth heaven remurmur and repeat
Sad sounds or sweet?


Do the stars answer? in the night
Have ye found comfort? or by day
Have ye seen gods? What hope, what light,
Falls from the farthest starriest way
On you that pray?


Are the skies wet because we weep,
Or fair because of any mirth?
Cry out; they are gods; perchance they sleep;
Cry; thou shalt know what prayers are worth,
Thou dust and earth.


O earth, thou art fair; O dust, thou art great;
O laughing lips and lips that mourn,
Pray, till ye feel the exceeding weight
Of God's intolerable scorn,
Not to be borne.


Behold, there is no grief like this;
The barren blossom of thy prayer,
Thou shalt find out how sweet it is.
O fools and blind, what seek ye there,
High up in the air?


Ye must have gods, the friends of men,
Merciful gods, compassionate,
And these shall answer you again.
Will ye beat always at the gate,
Ye fools of fate?


Ye fools and blind; for this is sure,
That all ye shall not live, but die.
Lo, what thing have ye found endure?
Or what thing have ye found on high
Past the blind sky?


The ghosts of words and dusty dreams,
Old memories, faiths infirm and dead.
Ye fools; for which among you deems
His prayer can alter green to red
Or stones to bread?


Why should ye bear with hopes and fears
Till all these things be drawn in one,
The sound of iron-footed years,
And all the oppression that is done
Under the sun?


Ye might end surely, surely pass
Out of the multitude of things,
Under the dust, beneath the grass,
Deep in dim death, where no thought stings,
No record clings.


No memory more of love or hate,
No trouble, nothing that aspires,
No sleepless labour thwarting fate,
And thwarted; where no travail tires,
Where no faith fires.


All passes, nought that has been is,
Things good and evil have one end.
Can anything be otherwise
Though all men swear all things would mend
With God to friend?


Can ye beat off one wave with prayer,
Can ye move mountains? bid the flower
Take flight and turn to a bird in the air?
Can ye hold fast for shine or shower
One wingless hour?


Ah sweet, and we too, can we bring
One sigh back, bid one smile revive?
Can God restore one ruined thing,
Or he who slays our souls alive
Make dead things thrive?


Two gifts perforce he has given us yet,
Though sad things stay and glad things fly;
Two gifts he has given us, to forget
All glad and sad things that go by,
And then to die.


We know not whether death be good,
But life at least it will not be:
Men will stand saddening as we stood,
Watch the same fields and skies as we
And the same sea.


Let this be said between us here,
One love grows green when one turns grey;
This year knows nothing of last year;
To-morrow has no more to say
To yesterday.


Live and let live, as I will do,
Love and let love, and so will I.
But, sweet, for me no more with you:
Not while I live, not though I die.
Goodnight, goodbye.

And a shorter one by Swinburne I really like, ironically written in 'hendecasyllabics':

HENDECASYLLABICS.

IN the month of the long decline of roses
I, beholding the summer dead before me,
Set my face to the sea and journeyed silent,
Gazing eagerly where above the sea-mark
Flame as fierce as the fervid eyes of lions
Half divided the eyelids of the sunset;
Till I heard as it were a noise of waters
Moving tremulous under feet of angels
Multitudinous, out of all the heavens;
Knew the fluttering wind, the fluttered foliage,
Shaken fitfully, full of sound and shadow;
And saw, trodden upon by noiseless angels,
Long mysterious reaches fed with moonlight,
Sweet sad straits in a soft subsiding channel,
Blown about by the lips of winds I knew not,
Winds not born in the north nor any quarter,
Winds not warm with the south nor any sunshine;
Heard between them a voice of exultation,
"Lo, the summer is dead, the sun is faded,
Even like as a leaf the year is withered,
All the fruits of the day from all her branches
Gathered, neither is any left to gather.
All the flowers are dead, the tender blossoms,
All are taken away; the season wasted,
Like an ember among the fallen ashes.
Now with light of the winter days, with moonlight,
Light of snow, and the bitter light of hoarfrost,
We bring flowers that fade not after autumn,
Pale white chaplets and crowns of latter seasons,
Fair false leaves (but the summer leaves were falser),
Woven under the eyes of stars and planets
When low light was upon the windy reaches
Where the flower of foam was blown, a lily
Dropt among the sonorous fruitless furrows
And green fields of the sea that make no pasture:
Since the winter begins, the weeping winter,
All whose flowers are tears, and round his temples
Iron blossom of frost is bound for ever."

My own work - which I have now decided to share

Everytime
I remember you,
flowers bloom
In my garden,
It is spring
Forever

Now I Have Nothing
Stella Benson

Now I have nothing. Even the joy of loss
Even the dreams I had I now am losing.
Only this thing I know; that you are using
My heart as a stone to bear your foot across.....
I am glad I am glad the stone is of your choosing.....

BRILLIANT MISTAKE
Elvis Costello

He thought he was the King of America
Where they pour Coca Cola just like vintage wine
Now I try hard not to become hysterical
But I'm not sure if I am laughing or crying
I wish that I could push a button
And talk in the past and not the present tense
And watch this hurtin' feeling disappear
Like it was common sense
It was a fine idea at the time
Now it's a brilliant mistake

She said that she was working for the ABC News
It was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use
Her perfume was unspeakable
It lingered in the air
Like her artificial laughter
Her mementos of affairs
"Oh" I said "I see you know him"
"Isn't that very fortunate for you"
And she showed me his calling card
He came third or fourth and there were more than one or two
He was a fine idea at the time
Now he's a brilliant mistake

He thought he was the King of America
But it was just a boulevard of broken dreams
A trick they do with mirrors and with chemicals
The words of love in whispers
And the axe of love in screams
I wish that I could push a button
And talk in the past and not the present tense
And watch this lovin' feeling disappear
Like it was common sense
I was a fine idea at the time
Now I'm a brilliant mistake

In the 'unrequited' department:

PERHAPS, PERHAPS, PERHAPS
Cake

You won't admit you love me
And so
How am I ever
To know
You only tell me
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps

A million times I ask you
And then
I ask you over
Again
You only answer
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps

If you can't make your mind up
We'll never get started
And I don't wanna' wind up
Being parted, broken hearted

So if you really love me
Say yes
But if you don't, dear,
Confess
And please don't tell me
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps

If you can't make your mind up
We'll never get started
And I don't wanna' wind up
Being parted, broken hearted

So if you really love me
Say yes
But if you don't, dear,
Confess
And please don't tell me
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps

Wow, great responses!


Nextone 'Millay the Magnificent' -- That is wonderful!
(wait till Piffka gets here. I have a feeling there'll be more of ESVM )


Raggedyaggie I LOVE that song


Kitchenpete I've never heard that song, now I HAVE to hear
it.


Phoenix Gogi Grant! That's one trivia question I could answer.



Cavfancier Swinburne was amazing wasn't he? I especially liked the lines:

. . . Birds quick to fledge and fly at call
Are quick to fall. . .

and

. . . Shall love rekindle from wet eyes . . .


Gautam Your poem is lovely. Thanks so much for sharing it.

Not with a Club, the Heart is broken
Nor with a Stone --
A Whip so small you could not see it
I've known

To lash the Magic Creature
Till it fell,
Yet that Whip's Name
Too noble then to tell.

Magnanimous as Bird
By Boy descried --
Singing unto the Stone
Of which it died --

Shame need not crouch
In such an Earth as Ours --
Shame -- stand erect --
The Universe is yours.
(Emily Dickinson, #1304)

Here's one more from ED:



I've got an arrow here.
Loving the hand that sent it
I the dart revere.

Fell, they will say, in "skirmish"!
Vanquished, my soul will know
By but a simple arrow
Sped by an archer's bow.
(Emily Dickinson, #1729)

Yeah, Swinburne was intense, and prolific...I particularily like:

Kiss me once hard as though a flame
Lay on my lips and made them fire;

With patter like that, I probably would have gotten laid a lot more in high school

Oboy, my favorite kind of poetry! Now Jjorge - why would you think I'd add an EStVM???

Guatam -- <HUGS> I'm glad you posted your good poetry!

One of my favorite "longing" poems is an old popular song.

Blue Bayou
Words and Music by Roy Orbison and Joe Melson

I feel so bad I've got a worried mind
I'm so lonesome all the time
Since I left my baby behind on Blue Bayou

Savin' nickels, savin' dimes
Workin' till the sun don't shine
Lookin' forward to happier times on Blue Bayou

I'm goin' back some day, come what may, to Blue Bayou
Where you sleep all day and the catfish play on Blue Bayou
All those fishin' boats with their sails afloat, if I could only see
That familiar sunrise thru sleepy eyes how happy I'd be

Oh, to see my baby again
And to be with some of my friends
Maybe I'd be happy then on Blue Bayou

I'm goin' back some day, gonna stay on Blue Bayou
Where the folks are fine and the world is mine on Blue Bayou
Ah, that boy of mine by my side
The silver moon and the evening tide
Ah, some sweet day gonna take away this hurtin' inside

I'll never be blue, my dreams come true
On Blue Bayou

This thread would not be complete without a little Hank Williams:

I'M SO LONESOME I COULD CRY

Hear that lonesome whippoorwill
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train is whining low
I'm so lonesome I could cry

I've never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry

Did you ever see a robin weep?
When leaves begin to die
Like me he's lost the will to live
I'm so lonesome I could cry

The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are
I'm so lonesome I could cry

I don't think it would have worked out Cav.

Swinburne liked girls didn't he?

Well being a married guy and all....harrumph! Just cuz I like poetry doesn't mean..geez!

This says it all for me! Brings back all sorts of memories and longings.

Unchained Melody

Oh, oh my love
Oh my darling
I've hungered for your touch
A long and lonely time


And time goes by so slowly
And time can do so much
Are you still mine


I need your love
I need your love
I need your love
God speed your love to me


Lonely rivers flow
To the sea, to the sea
To the open arms of the sea


Lonely rivers sigh
Wait for me, wait for me