AlphaPoem of the Week - Sonnet 116

Before I become all-consumed by my first novel project starting tomorrow, I thought I'd post this week's poem, Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare.

This is another favourite of mine (notice the recurring love theme in my choices!).  I adore the way that the first line and a half is almost overly wordy and serious - it just emphasises the simplicity of the statements that follow.

For Shakespeare, true love never dies.  What an old romantic.


Sonnet 116 - William Shakespeare

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 wandering 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.

AlphaPoem of the Week – Asking for Roses

I am in a happy, life-affirming, hoorah-type mood today, and have just found this poem to complement that mood.

Robert Frost is probably best known for his famous poem ‘The Road Not Taken’, which might be an APOTW another time.  ‘Asking for Roses’ has a wonderful lyricism to it, like children’s poetry, but is suffused with sensuous rose petals and thinly-veiled virgins ripe for the plucking!

This joyful poem’s for CiBi and her eternal love of literature.


Asking for Roses
Robert Frost

A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,
With doors that none but the wind ever closes,
Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster;
It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses.

I pass by that way in the gloaming with Mary;
'I wonder,' I say, 'who the owner of those is.'
'Oh, no one you know,' she answers me airy,
'But one we must ask if we want any roses.'

So we must join hands in the dew coming coldly
There in the hush of the wood that reposes,
And turn and go up to the open door boldly,
And knock to the echoes as beggars for roses.

'Pray, are you within there, Mistress Who-were-you?'
'Tis Mary that speaks and our errand discloses.
'Pray, are you within there? Bestir you, bestir you!
'Tis summer again; there's two come for roses.

'A word with you, that of the singer recalling--
Old Herrick: a saying that every maid knows is
A flower unplucked is but left to the falling,
And nothing is gained by not gathering roses.'

We do not loosen our hands' intertwining
(Not caring so very much what she supposes),
There when she comes on us mistily shining
And grants us by silence the boon of her roses.

AlphaPoem of the Week - If I Could Tell You

To indulge and share my love of poetry, I have decided to post a Poem of the Week.  Future poems will be those I’ve loved for a long time, or poems I’ve just discovered.  I will aim for variety, although love will be a strong theme in many I choose.

This first, ‘If I Could Tell You’ by W.H. Auden is one of my all-time favourite poems.  For me, it portrays the unknowability of the future, and our very human need to know the impossible – whether our love will last forever.

It lends itself excellently to being read aloud, in a slow, melancholy rhythm.  That said, I often can’t get through the third stanza without a lump in my throat and a break in my voice.

For all those that have been frightened of letting go and falling in love.  I hope you enjoy it.

  If I could tell you
  W.H. Auden

  Time will say nothing but I told you so,
  Time only knows the price we have to pay;
  If I could tell you I would let you know.

  If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
  If we should stumble when musicians play,
  Time will say nothing but I told you so.

  There are no fortunes to be told, although,
  Because I love you more than I can say,
  If I could tell you I would let you know.

  The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
  There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
  Time will say nothing but I told you so.

  Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
  The vision seriously intends to stay;
  If I could tell you I would let you know.

  Suppose the lions all get up and go,
  And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
  Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
  If I could tell you I would let you know.