Life in a Love by Robert Browning

Escape me?
Never—
Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,
Me the loving and you the loth,
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear:
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed.
But what if I fail of my purpose here?
It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,
And baffled, get up to begin again,—
So the chase takes up one's life, that's all.
While, look but once from your farthest bound,
At me so deep in the dust and dark,
No sooner the old hope drops to ground
Than a new one, straight to the selfsame mark,
I shape me—
Ever
Removed!

उत्तर दो रघुनंदन

सीतामढ़ी के मंदिर में - माँ सीता की प्रतिमा

हे आर्य पुत्र मेरी 
शंका का समाधान करो 
मै धरा -नंदिनी सीता आज तुमसे एक प्रश्न पूछती हूँ
वो पुत्र तुम ही हो न
जिसने पिता के वचन हेतु
चौदह साल का बन गमन
सहर्ष स्वीकारा परन्तु
पत्नी को दिए सात वचन
तुम कैसे भूल गये
हे राघव तुम भले ही
मात्रपितृ भक्त हो
अनुकरणीय भ्राता भी
परन्तु क्या तुम
उपमेय पति हो ?
अपनी आसन्नप्रसवा पत्नी को
बन भेज कर तुमने किस -
मर्यादा का पालन किया
जो तुम्हारे ही वंशज को
अपने रक्त मांस से पोस रही थी
उसे बन की कठोर जीवन शैली
सौपते हुए तुम्हारा ह्रदय नहीं कांपा
तुममें इतना भी साहस न था
कि उसे उसका अपराध बता कर
स्वयं छोड़ आते --परन्तु
लघु भ्राता द्वारा भेज तुमने
अपना अपराध बोध तो
स्वयं ही सिद्ध कर दिया-
अयोध्या नरेश ये कैसा न्याय है ?
कैसी मर्यादा है मर्यादापुरुषोत्तम ?
अब क्या कहूँ --नहीं कहूँगी कुछ
मै अनुगामिनी हूँ तुम्हारी --
हे रघुवीर बन गमन के समय
तुम्हारे साथ आने का निर्णय मेरा था
पतिधर्म में कौन सी कमी रह गई थी
जो मेरी अग्नि परीक्षा ली तुमनें
हे राघव दुःख और कठिन परीक्षा की
घड़ी में छाया की भाँती साथ रही
अपनी ही अनुगामिनी को
धोबी के मात्र दो बोलों पे त्याग दिया
जाओ दशरथंनंदन मै जनकनंदिनी वसुधापुत्री
सीता तुम्हे छमा करती हूँ जानते हो आर्य पुत्र
मै धरा की पुत्री हूँ माता का धैर्य है मुझमें
तुम्हारे पुत्र तुम्हे सौंप --मै अपनी माँ की गोद में
विश्राम करती हूँ --हे रघुवीर तुम्हे त्याग कर
सदा के लिए --बस यही प्रतिकार है मेरा
मुझे ज्ञात है तुम अनुत्तरित ही रहोगे - Divya Shukla

Her Voice by Oscar Wilde

The wild bee reels from bough to bough 
With his furry coat and his gauzy wing, 
Now in a lily-cup, and now 
Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,
In his wandering;
Sit closer love: it was here I trow
I made that vow,
Swore that two lives should be like one
As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,
As long as the sunflower sought the sun,-
It shall be, I said, for eternity
'Twixt you and me!
Dear friend, those times are over and done;
Love's web is spun.
Look upward where the poplar trees
Sway and sway in the summer air,
Here in the valley never a breeze
Scatters the thistledown, but there
Great winds blow fair
From the mighty murmuring mystical seas,
And the wave-lashed leas.
Look upward where the white gull screams,
What does it see that we do not see?
Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams
On some outward voyaging argosy,
Ah! can it be
We have lived our lives in a land of dreams!
How sad it seems.
Sweet, there is nothing left to say
But this, that love is never lost,
Keen winter stabs the breasts of May
Whose crimson roses burst his frost,
Ships tempest-tossed
Will find a harbour in some bay,
And so we may.

And there is nothing left to do
But to kiss once again, and part,
Nay, there is nothing we should rue,
I have my beauty,-you your Art,
Nay, do not start,
One world was not enough for two
Like me and you

A Tear & A Smile

I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart 
For the joys of the multitude.
And I would not have the tears that sadness makes To flow from my every part turn into laughter.

I would that my life remain a tear and a smile.

A tear to purify my heart and give me understanding
Of life's secrets and hidden things.
A smile to draw me nigh to the sons of my kind and
To be a symbol of my glorification of the gods.

A tear to unite me with those of broken heart;
A smile to be a sign of my joy in existence.

I would rather that I died in yearning and longing than that I live Weary and despairing.

I want the hunger for love and beauty to be in the
Depths of my spirit,for I have seen those who are
Satisfied the most wretched of people.
I have heard the sigh of those in yearning and Longing, and it is sweeter than the sweetest melody.

With evening's coming the flower folds her petals
And sleeps, embracingher longing.
At morning's approach she opens her lips to meet
The sun's kiss.

The life of a flower is longing and fulfilment.
A tear and a smile.

The waters of the sea become vapor and rise and come
Together and area cloud.

And the cloud floats above the hills and valleys
Until it meets the gentle breeze, then falls weeping
To the fields and joins with brooks and rivers to Return to the sea, its home.

The life of clouds is a parting and a meeting.
A tear and a smile.

And so does the spirit become separated from
The greater spirit to move in the world of matter
And pass as a cloud over the mountain of sorrow
And the plains of joy to meet the breeze of death
And return whence it came.

To the ocean of Love and Beauty----to God.

- Khalil Gibran

He Who Accumulates Cannot Learn by J. Krishnamurti

[

It seems that communion is a very difficult art. To commune with one another over the many problems that we have requires listening and learning, which are both very difficult to do. Most of us hardly listen, and we hardly learn. To commune with each other, which is what these meetings are intended for, requires a certain capacity, a certain way of listening - not merely to gather information, which any schoolboy can do, but rather listening in order to understand. […]

It seems to me of the utmost importance that we do listen in order to learn. Learning is not merely the accumulation of knowledge. Knowledge never brings perception; experience never flowers into the beauty of understanding. Most of us listen with the background of what we know, of what we have experienced. Perhaps you have never noticed the difference between the mind that really learns and the mind that merely accumulates, gathers knowledge. The mind that is accumulating knowledge never learns. It is always translating what it hears in terms of its own experience, in terms of the knowledge which it has gathered; it is caught up in the process of accumulating, of adding to what it already knows, and such a mind is incapable of learning. I do not know if you have noticed this. [...] So it seems to me very important that we commune with each other quietly, in a dignified manner, and for that there must be a listening and a learning.

When you commune with your own heart, when you commune with your friend, when you commune with the skies, with the stars, with the sunset, with a flower, then surely you are listening so as to find out, to learn - which does not mean that you accept or deny. You are learning, and either acceptance or denial of what is being said puts an end to learning. When you commune with the sunset, with a friend, with your wife, with your child, you do not criticize, you do not deny or assert, translate or identify. You are communing, you are learning, you are searching out. From this inquiry comes the movement of learning, which is never accumulative.

I think it is important to understand that a man who accumulates can never learn. Self-learning implies a fresh, eager mind - a mind that is not committed, a mind that does not belong to anything, that is not limited to any particular field. It is only such a mind that learns.

Love Me At Last by Alice Corbin

LOVE me at last, or if you will not,
    Leave me; Hard words could never, as these half-words,
    Grieve me:
Love me at last—or leave me.

Love me at last, or let the last word uttered
    Be but your own;
Love me, or leave me—as a cloud, a vapor,
    Or a bird flown.
Love me at last—I am but sliding water
    Over a stone.

Unending Love by Rabindranath Tagore

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age-old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same 
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours – 
And the songs of every poet past and forever.