Friday, July 26, 2013

The Lovely Night, by Goethe


photo found at http://goo.gl/81ROOo
Now I leave this little hut
Where my beloved lives,
Walking now with veiled steps
Through the shadowy leaves.
Luna shines through bush and oak,
Zephyr proclaims her path,
And the birch trees bowing low
Shed incense on her track.
How beautiful the coolness
Of this lovely summer night!
How the soul fills with happiness
In this true place of quiet!
I can scarcely grasp the bliss!
Yet, Heaven, I would shun
A thousand nights like this,
If my darling granted one.

Translated by A. S. Kline ©  2004 All Rights Reserved

Thursday, July 25, 2013

"I loved you first: but afterwards your love" By Christina Rossetti

Ford Madox Brown, Romeo and Juliet (1867)

Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda. – Dante
Ogni altra cosa, ogni pensier va fore,
E sol ivi con voi rimansi amore. – Petrarca

 


I loved you first: but afterwards your love
    Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
    Which owes the other most? my love was long,
    And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;
I loved and guessed at you, you construed me
And loved me for what might or might not be –
    Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’
    With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done,
         For one is both and both are one in love:
Rich love knows nought of ‘thine that is not mine;’
         Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.

Silentium Amoris, by Oscar Wilde

Romany, Adele (1769-1846) - Young lovers playing the lyre, 1802
As often-times the too resplendent sun
Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon
Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won
A single ballad from the nightingale,
So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,
And all my sweetest singing out of tune.

And as at dawn across the level mead
On wings impetuous some wind will come,
And with its too harsh kisses break the reed
Which was its only instrument of song,
So my too stormy passions work me wrong,
And for excess of Love my Love is dumb.

But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show
Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung;
Else it were better we should part, and go,
Thou to some lips of sweeter melody,
And I to nurse the barren memory
Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung.

Delight in Disorder, by Robert Herrick

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Les hasards heureux de l’escarpolette (1767)

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction--
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher--
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbands to flow confusedly--
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat--
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility--
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Come, dearest - Paul the Silentiary, 575-580 AD



Idyll - William Adolphe Bouguereau, 1851


Come, dearest, cast these silly veils away 
That half thy glory hide, 
And show they naked body to the day, 
And boldly be my bride

Let nothing be between us; even this
Thin tissue thou hast on
Is thicker than the wall Semiramis
Built around Babylon

Then breast to breast and lip to lip we'll lie, 
And all I have not sung
We'll whisper to ourselves, for you and I
Abhor a babbling tongue... 
 

I loved, I kissed...


Le Baiser - Carolus Duran, 1768





































I loved, I kissed, she kissed me back and love
was in her kiss;
But who loved whom, and when and why-
ask Love to tell you this 

Love Epigrams from the Palatine Anthology - Anonymous

Monday, July 15, 2013

This Night...

photo  found at http://goo.gl/7Erdv 




Let's whisper words of love
Lost in eachother's arms
This night is blessing us with stars and fireflies
My lips on your lips
Your hands holding me softly 
Breathing each other' s  longing 
We share the silence 
 
This night keeps us safe
enwrapped in a silver cocoon
 Hiding us away from the mad world...
Suddenly
The moon is rising gently
kissed by the sea
and Venus smiles
Compassionate for the impatient lovers...
 As we move
 with every breath
My heart is full of you 
Your heart is full of me 
the tide in our blood rises and falls 
 we float on cradling waves of hope
expanding 
until the galaxy slowly 
starts to flow inside our veins
murmuring an ancient love song...

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Pages from an unwritten diary



My photo in instagram @luyu All rights reserved ©


"... So it begins. The first time, when your eyes, blue and vast and warm like summer lakes, start to explore my face. To slide slowly over my eyebrow, my eyes, my cheeks... caressing my lips. I feel lost inside that one first look, naked under the light of your thoughts. They are so clear, i can almost touch them, i can almost hear their crystal sound echoing inside me. I feel like an unknown land. A terra incognita. Every inch of my body yearns to be explored...and the dry earth of my soul shivers in secret wanting of your Love... Soon, i know, you will hold my clouds inside your warm palm...And soon, my heart will bloom in one thousand rainbows reflecting your eyes..."

Pages from an unwritten diary