Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Sonnet CXXX

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hair be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes there is more delight
Than in the breath which from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak,—yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go,—
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground;
¨¨¨And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
¨¨¨As any she belied with false compare.
William Shakespeare

Monday, November 26, 2007

Aedh Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven

(Yeats sometimes called this poem "How to Lose the Girl.")
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwroght with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-ligh,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Aedh Laments the Loss of Love

Pale brows, still hands and dim hair,
I had a beautiful friend
And dreamed that the old despair
Would end in love in the end;
She looked in my heart one day
And saw your image there;
She has gone weeping away.

—William Butler Yeats