How do I love thee? (Sonnet 43) - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

My Nose by Gabriel Liebermann

I never chose my nose to be,
a statement of longevity.
Its grandeur lies within its size,
and the way it looms between my eyes;
and the way it leads me from meal to meal.
Some wonder if the bulbous thing
is mine. And is it really real?

From my childhood days I wore it,
like a crown my mom adored it.
My father who had a big one too,
said son, its something to get used to;
and if children taunt you, dont forget,
there are bigger things you will regret,
and your nose will grow much bigger yet.

So big in fact that when I sneeze,
the trees around me lose their leaves.
It precedes me into any room,
but it has always made the ladies swoon.
People often say to I,
smaller noses we have seen,
on elephants and rhinoceri!

Me and my nose are stuck together,
weather for worse or maybe better.
It gives my face a regal look;
and helps turn pages in this book.
And when they put me in a basket,
tell the one that builds my casket:
to cut a hole on top so I,
can smell the flowers when I die...

Grief by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I tell you hopeless grief is passionless,
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God's throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In souls, as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy dead in silence like to death—
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet;
If it could weep, it could arise and go.

The Dead by Sylvia Plath

Revolving in oval loops of solar speed,
Couched in cauls of clay as in holy robes,
Dead men render love and war no heed,
Lulled in the ample womb of the full-tilt globe.

No spiritual Caesars are these dead;
They want no proud paternal kingdom come;
And when at last they blunder into bed
World-wrecked, they seek only oblivion.

Rolled round with goodly loam and cradled deep,
These bone shanks will not wake immaculate
To trumpet-toppling dawn of doomstruck day :
They loll forever in colossal sleep;
Nor can God's stern, shocked angels cry them up
From their fond, final, infamous decay.

A Dream Within A Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

A Child's Fear by Juanita Nena RudonBeeke

Night time has come
To bed she will go
Her head she’ll lay down
Her eyes will not close

Her hands clasped in prayer
For a night without fear
For when her eyes are shut
An evil presence will appear

As he watches over her
His eyes so striking red
Her eyes still are open
Her body affixed to the bed

She tries to scream - no sound she’ll make
She tries to stir - no movement came
And all this time he stares at her
His presence here - an ungodly fear

It’s now half five
The church bell rings
She now can rise
And sounds she’ll make

Her hands in prayer while she offer thanks
She now can close her eyes
For tonight she must be prepared
For she know again he'll appear...