AND THOU ART DEAD, AS YOUNG AND FAIR by: George Gordon (Lord) Byron (1788-1824)

ND thou art dead, as young and fair

As aught of mortal birth;

And form so soft, and charms so rare,

Too soon return'd to Earth!

Though Earth receiv'd them in her bed,

And o'er the spot the crowd may tread

In carelessness or mirth,

There is an eye which could not brook

A moment on that grave to look.

 

I will not ask where thou liest low,

Nor gaze upon the spot;

There flowers or weeds at will may grow,

So I behold them not:

It is enough for me to prove

That what I lov'd, and long must love,

Like common earth can rot;

To me there needs no stone to tell,

'T is Nothing that I lov'd so well.

 

Yet did I love thee to the last

As fervently as thou,

Who didst not change through all the past,

And canst not alter now.

The love where Death has set his seal,

Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,

Nor falsehood disavow:

And, what were worse, thou canst not see

Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.

 

The better days of life were ours;

The worst can be but mine:

The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers,

Shall never more be thine.

The silence of that dreamless sleep

I envy now too much to weep;

Nor need I to repine

That all those charms have pass'd away,

I might have watch'd through long decay.

 

The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd

Must fall the earliest prey;

Though by no hand untimely snatch'd,

The leaves must drop away:

And yet it were a greater grief

To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,

Than see it pluck'd to-day;

Since earthly eye but ill can bear

To trace the change to foul from fair.

 

I know not if I could have borne

To see thy beauties fade;

The night that follow'd such a morn

Had worn a deeper shade:

Thy day without a cloud hath pass'd,

And thou wert lovely to the last,

Extinguish'd, not decay'd;

As stars that shoot along the sky

Shine brightest as they fall from high.

 

As once I wept, if I could weep,

My tears might well be shed,

To think I was not near to keep

One vigil o'er thy bed;

To gaze, how fondly! on thy face,

To fold thee in a faint embrace,

Uphold thy drooping head;

And show that love, however vain,

Nor thou nor I can feel again.

 

Yet how much less it were to gain,

Though thou hast left me free,

The loveliest things that still remain,

Than thus remember thee!

The all of thine that cannot die

Through dark and dread Eternity

Returns again to me,

And more thy buried love endears

Than aught except its living years.

"And Thou art Dead, as Young and Fair" is reprinted from Works. George Gordon Byron. London: John Murray, 1832

La courbe de tes yeux... by Paul Eluard

La courbe de tes yeux... by Paul Eluard

The original poem in French was published in Capitale de la douleur in 1926. 
La courbe de tes yeux fait le tour de mon coeur,
Un rond de danse et de douceur,
Auréole du temps, berceau nocturne et sûr,
Et si je ne sais plus tout ce que j’ai vécu
C’est que tes yeux ne m’ont pas toujours vu.
Feuilles de jour et mousse de rosée,
Roseaux du vent, sourires parfumés,
Ailes couvrant le monde de lumière,
Bateaux chargés du ciel et de la mer,
Chasseurs des bruits et sources des couleurs,
Parfums éclos d’une couvée d’aurores
Qui gît toujours sur la paille des astres,
Comme le jour dépend de l’innocence
Le monde entier dépend de tes yeux purs
Et tout mon sang coule dans leurs regards.
***

The curve of your eyes
Translated by Anne-Charlotte Husson


The curve of your eyes goes around my heart,
A round of dance and sweetness,
Halo of time, nocturnal and safe cradle,
And if I don’t know any more all that I’ve lived through
It’s because I haven’t always been seen by you.
Leaves of day and scum of dew,
Reeds of the wind, perfumed smiles,
Wings covering the world with light,
Ships filled with the sky and the sea,
Hunters of noises and sources of colours,
Perfumes bloomed from a brood of dawns
That always lies on the straw of the stars,
As the day depends on innocence
The whole world depends on your pure eyes
And all my blood flows in their looks.

L'amoureuse by Paul Éluard

L'amoureuse by Paul Éluard in French

Elle est debour sur mes paupières
Et ses cheveux sont dans les miens,
Elle a la forme de mes mains,
Elle a la couleur de mes yeux,
Elle s'engloutit dan mon ombre
Comme une pierre sur le ciel.

Elle a toujours les yeux ouverts
Et ne me laisse pas dormir.
Ses rêves en pleine lumière
Font s'évaporer les soleils,
Me font rire, pleurer et rire,
Parler sans avoir rien à dire

Translated in English by Samuel Beckett, an Irish writer-

Lady Love

She is standing on my lids
And her hair is in my hair
She has the colour of my eye
She has the body of my hand
In my shade she is engulfed
As a stone against the sky

She will never close her eyes
And she does not let me sleep
And her dreams in the bright day
Make the suns evaporate
And me laugh cry and laugh
Speak when I have nothing to say

Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
...

I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

For an Addict by John O'Donohue

On its way through the innocent night
the moth is ambushed by the light,
becomes glued to a window
where a candle burns
its whole self, its dreams of flight
and all desire
trapped in one glazed gaze.

Now nothing else can satisfy
but the deadly beauty of the flame.
When you lose the feel
for all other belonging
and what is truly near
becomes distant and ghostly,
you are visited and claimed
by a simplicity
sinister in its singularity.

No longer yourself,
your mind will be owned
and steered from elsewhere now.
You will sacrifice anything
to dance once more
to the haunted music
with your fatal beloved
who owns the eyes to your heart.

These words of blessings cannot reach,
even as echos, to the shore of where you are.
Yet, may they walk without you
to soften some slight line,
through to the white cave
where your soul is captive.

May some glimmer of outside light
reach your eyes
to help you recognize how you have fallen
for a vampire.
May you crash hard and soon
onto real ground again
where this fundamentalist shell
might start to crack
for you to hear again
your own echo.

That your lost lonesome heart
might learn to cry out
for the true intimacy of love
that waits to take you home
to where you are known and seen
and where your life is treasured
beyond every frontier
of despair you have crossed.

~~ John O'Donohue

The Empowered Woman by Sonny Carroll

The Empowered Woman,

she moves through the world

with a sense of confidence and grace.

Her once reckless spirit now tempered by wisdom.

Quietly, yet firmly, she speaks her truth without doubt or hesitation

and the life she leads is of her own creation.

She now understands what it means to live and let live.

How much to ask for herself and how much to give.

She has a strong, yet generous heart

and the inner beauty she emanates truly sets her apart.

Like the mythical Phoenix,

she has risen from the ashes and soared to a new plane of existence,

unfettered by the things that once that posed such resistance.

Her senses now heightened, she sees everything so clearly.

She hears the wind rustling through the trees;

beckoning her to live the dreams she holds so dearly.

She feels the softness of her hands

and muses at the strength that they possess.

Her needs and desires she has learned to express.

She has tasted the bitter and savored the sweet fruits of life,

overcome adversity and pushed past heartache and strife.

And the one thing she never understood,

she now knows to be true,

it all begins and ends with you.

The Secret of Work by Swami Vivekananda

Whatever we do, we want a return. We are all traders. We are traders in life, we are traders in virtue, we are traders in religion. And alas! we are also traders in love.

If you come to trade, if it is a question of give-and-take, if it is a question of buy-and-sell, abide by the laws of buying and selling. There is a bad time and there is a good time; there is a rise and a fall in prices: always expect the blow to come. It is like looking at the mirror. Your face is reflected: you make a grimace — there is one in the mirror; if you laugh, the mirror laughs. This is buying and selling, giving and taking.

We get caught. How? Not by what we give, but by what we expect. We get misery in return for our love; not from the fact that we love, but from the fact that we want love in return. There is no misery where there is no want. Desire, want, is the father of all misery. Desires are bound by the laws of success and failure. Desires must bring misery.

The great secret of true success, of true happiness, then, is this: the man who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish man, is the most successful. It seems to be a paradox. Do we not know that every man who is unselfish in life gets cheated, gets hurt? Apparently, yes. "Christ was unselfish, and yet he was crucified." True, but we know that his unselfishness is the reason, the cause of a great victory — the crowning of millions upon millions of lives with the blessings of true success.

Swami Vivekananda in "Work and Its Secret"