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Engagement

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  • Poem

    A Red, Red Rose

    By Robert Burns
    O my Luve is like a red, red rose
       That’s newly sprung in June;
    O my Luve is like the melody
       That’s sweetly played in tune.

    So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
       So deep in luve am I;...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Marriage

    By Lawrence Raab
    Years later they find themselves talking   
    about chances, moments when their lives   
    might have swerved off
    for the smallest reason.
                                         What if
    I hadn’t phoned, he says, that morning?   
    What if you’d been out,
    as you were when I tried three times   
    the night before?
                               Then she tells...
  • Poem

    Altruism

    By Molly Peacock
    What if we got outside ourselves and there   
    really was an outside out there, not just   
    our insides turned inside out? What if there   
    really were a you beyond me, not just   
    the waves off my own fire, like those waves off   
    the backyard grill...
  • Poem

    I Knew a Woman

    By Theodore Roethke
    I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
    When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;   
    Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:   
    The shapes a bright container can contain!
    Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
    Or English...
  • Poem

    Tamer and Hawk

    By Thom Gunn
    I thought I was so tough,
    But gentled at your hands,
    Cannot be quick enough
    To fly for you and show
    That when I go I go
    At your commands.

    Even in flight above
    I am no longer free:
    You seeled me with your love,
    I am blind to...
  • Poem

    Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

    By William Shakespeare
    Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
    Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
    Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
    And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
    Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
    And often is his...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

    By E. E. Cummings
    i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
    my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
    i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
    by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                                          i fear
    no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
    no world(for beautiful you are my...
  • Poem

    The Ache of Marriage

    By Denise Levertov
    The ache of marriage:

    thigh and tongue, beloved,   
    are heavy with it,   
    it throbs in the teeth

    We look for communion
    and are turned away, beloved,   
    each and each

    It is leviathan and we   
    in its belly
    looking for joy, some joy   
    not to be known outside it

    two by two...
  • Poem

    When ’Midst the Gay I Meet

    By Thomas Moore
    When ’midst the gay I meet
          That gentle smile of thine,
    Though still on me it turns most sweet,
          I scarce can call it mine:
    But when to me alone
          Your secret tears you show,
    Oh, then I feel those...
  • Poem

    The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

    By Christopher Marlowe
    Come live with me and be my love,
    And we will all the pleasures prove,
    That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
    Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

    And we will sit upon the Rocks,
    Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks,...
  • Poem

    Love Calls Us to the Things of This World

    By Richard Wilbur
    The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
    And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul   
    Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple   
    As false dawn.
                         Outside the open window   
    The morning air is all awash with angels.

        Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,   
    Some...
  • Poem

    from Epipsychidion

    By Percy Bysshe Shelley
    Emily,
    A ship is floating in the harbour now,
    A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;
    There is a path on the sea's azure floor,
    No keel has ever plough'd that path before;
    The halcyons brood around the foamless...
  • Poem

    Rabbi Ben Ezra

    By Robert Browning
    Grow old along with me!
    The best is yet to be,
    The last of life, for which the first was made:
    Our times are in His hand
    Who saith "A whole I planned,
    Youth shows but half; trust God: see...
  • Poem

    The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

    By Edward Lear
    I
    The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
       In a beautiful pea-green boat,
    They took some honey, and plenty of money,
       Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
    The Owl looked up to the stars above,
       And sang to a...
  • Poem

    To My Dear and Loving Husband

    By Anne Bradstreet
    If ever two were one, then surely we.
    If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.
    If ever wife was happy in a man,
    Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
    I prizeprize Value thy love more than whole mines of gold,
    Or...
  • Poem

    The Good-Morrow

    By John Donne
    I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
    Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
    But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
    Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
    ’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies...
  • Poem

    The Bait

    By John Donne
    Come live with me, and be my love,
    And we will some new pleasures prove
    Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
    With silken lines, and silver hooks.

    There will the river whispering run
    Warm'd by thy eyes, more than...
  • Poem

    Lovers' Infiniteness

    By John Donne
    If yet I have not all thy love,
    Dear, I shall never have it all;
    I cannot breathe one other sigh, to move,
    Nor can intreat one other tear to fall;
    And all my treasure, which should purchase thee—
    Sighs,...
  • Poem

    The Illiterate

    By William Meredith
    Touching your goodness, I am like a man
    Who turns a letter over in his hand
    And you might think this was because the hand
    Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man
    Has never had a letter from anyone;
    And now he is both afraid...
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