Deep violets, you liken to The kindest eyes that look on you, Without a thought disloyal; — Elizabeth Barrett Browning, from “A Flower in a Letter,” The Complete Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. (TheClassics.us September 12, 2013)
what a wonderful thing is the end of a string (murmurs little you-i as the hill becomes nil) and will somebody tell me why people let go — E.E. Cummings, from “o by the by”, Selected Poems 1923-1958. (Penguin Books, January 1, 1963)
I hide myself – within my flower, That fading from your Vase – You – unsuspecting – feel for me – Almost – a loneliness – — Emily Dickinson, from “[I hide myself within my flower],” The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (Little, Brown, & Company, 1960)
The Gardener: When I go alone at night When I go alone at night to my love-tryst, birds do not sing, the wind does not stir, the houses on both sides of the street stand silent. It is my own anklets that grow loud at every step and I am ashamed. When I sit on… Continue reading Rabindranath Tagore
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these. ― Emily Dickinson
How sweet the silent backward tracings! — Walt Whitman, from “Memories,” First Annex: Sands at Seventy, Leaves of Grass: The Deathbed Edition (BOMC, 1992)
You lingering sparse leaves of me on winter-nearing boughs, And I some well-shorn tree of field or orchard-row; You tokens diminute and lorn—(not now the flush of May, or July clover-bloom—no grain of August now;) You pallid banner-staves—you pennants valueless—you overstay’d of time, Yet my soul-dearest leaves confirming all the rest, The faithfulest—hardiest—last.… Continue reading Walt Whitman
