Amo Ergo Sum
Because I love
The sun pours out its rays of living gold
Pours out its gold and silver on the sea.
Because I love
The earth upon her astral spindle winds
Her ecstasy-producing dance.
Because I love
Clouds travel on the winds through wide skies,
Skies wide and beautiful, blue and deep.
Because I love
Wind blows white sails,
The wind blows over flowers, the sweet wind blows.
Because I love
The ferns grow green, and green the grass, and green
The transparent sunlit trees.
Because I love`
Larks rise up from the grass
And all the leaves are full of singing birds.
Because I love
The summer air quivers with a thousand wings,
Myriads of jewelled eyes burn in the light.
The iridescent shells upon the sand
Takes forms as fine and intricate as thought.
Because I love
There is an invisible way across the sky,
Birds travel by that way, the sun and moon
And all the stars travel that path by night.
Because I love
There is a river flowing all night long.
Because I love
All night the river flows into my sleep,
Ten thousand living things are sleeping in my arms,
And sleeping wake, and flowing are at rest.
Love’s Immortality
Who may know if a loved one passes the prime, while ever with him and never left alone? Who may not satisfy to-day who satisfied yesterday? And if he satisfy, what should befall him not to satisfy to-morrow?
—translated from the Greek by John William Mackail
from Epipsychidion
True Love in this differs from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away.
Love is like understanding, that grows bright,
Gazing on many truths; ’tis like thy light,
Imagination! which from earth and sky,
And from the depths of human phantasy,
As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills
The Universe with glorious beams, and kills
Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow
Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow
The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates,
The life that wears,
the spirit that creates
One object, and one form, and builds thereby
A sepulchre for its eternity.
Layla and Majnun
When the Dawn of Eternity whispered of Love, Love cast the Fire of Longing into the Pen.
The Pen raised its head from the Tablet of Not-Being, and drew a hundred pictures of wondrous aspect.
The Heavens are the offspring of Love: the Elements fell to Earth through Love.
Without Love is no token of Good or Evil: that thing which is not of Love is indeed non-existent.
This lofty azure Roof which revolveth through the days and nights
Is the Lotus of the Garden of Love, and all the Ball [which lies] in the curve of Love’s Polo-stick.
That Magnetism which is inherent in the Stone, and which fastens its grasp so firmly on the Iron,
Is a Love precipitated in Iron Resolve which hath appeared from within the Stone.
Behold the Stone, how in this resting-place it becomes without weight through longing for its opponent:
Judge therefrom of those who suffer sorrow in the attraction of the love of those dear to the heart.
Although Love is painful, it is the consolation of pure bosoms.
Without the blessing of Love how shall a man escape from the sorrow of the inverted Wheel [of Heaven]?
—translated from the Persian by Edward G. Browne
love is a place
love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places
yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds
Were I Reborn
Were I reborn a stone,
even so I should love you, woman.
Were I reborn as wind,
even so I should love you, woman.
Were I reborn a wave,
even so I should love you, woman.
Were I reborn as fire,
even so I should love you, woman.
Were I reborn a man,
even so I should love you, woman.
—translated from the Spanish by Eleanor L. Turnbull
A Lecture Upon the Shadow
Stand still, and I will read to thee
A lecture, Love, in Love’s philosophy.
These three hours that we have spent,
Walking here, two shadows went
Along with us, which we ourselves produced.
But, now the sun is just above our head,
We do those shadows tread,
And to brave clearness all things are reduced.
So whilst our infant loves did grow,
Disguises did, and shadows, flow
From us and our cares; but now ’tis not so.
That love hath not attain’d the highest degree,
Which is still diligent lest others see.
Except our loves at this noon stay,
We shall new shadows make the other way.
As the first were made to blind
Others, these which come behind
Will work upon ourselves, and blind our eyes.
If our loves faint, and westerwardly decline,
To me thou, falsely, thine
And I to thee mine actions shall disguise.
The morning shadows wear away,
But these grow longer all the day;
But O! love’s day is short, if love decay.
Love is a growing, or full constant light,
And his short minute, after noon, is night.
We only know the one we love
Not the one who loves us.
Love is of many kinds.
One love says: if you die let me die with you.
Another love says: if you buy the stew, I will buy the rice.
There is love of the eye,
There is love of the mouth.
The love of the wife is different,
The love of the husband is different,
The love of the father is different,
The love of the mother is greatest.
It is love that makes the goat share her husband’s beard.
‘I see the one I want to marry.’
The father says: ‘Don’t you know that his father is deaf?’
‘If the whip howls on my back, and thunder shouts in heaven,
If you tie me to the pillar and feed me with grass like a horse,
I will still know whom I love!’
—translated from the Yoruba by Robert Cameron Mitchell
The Revelation
An idle poet, here and there,
Looks round him, but, for all the rest,
The world, unfathomably fair,
Is duller than a witling’s jest.
Love wakes men, once a lifetime each;
They lift their heavy lids, and look;
And, lo, what one sweet page can teach,
They read with joy, then shut the book.
And give some thanks, and some blaspheme,
And most forget, but, either way,
That and the child’s unheeded dream
Is all the light of all their day.
The Melody at a Spring Night
Hearing the sound of a flute, on a spring night in Luo Cheng,
[I wonder] from whose jade flute this melody is flying secretly in the dark?
Vibrating and scattering around, merging gently in the spring breeze,
it fills the air and the heaven of Luo Cheng;
On such a night, I hear in the middle of its singing music
the bending and dancing of the trembling willow.
Whose heart would not be moved by sentiments and love,
soaring with the thoughts of precious home?
—translated from the Chinese by Ninaz Shadman
Love’s Philosophy
The Fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law devine
In one another’s being mingle—
Why not I with thine?
See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdain’d its brother:
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea—
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?
Injunction
The Angel that presided o’er my birth
Said, ‘Little creature, formed of joy and mirth
Go love, without the help of any thing on earth.’
from The House of Love
This house wherein is continually the sound of the viol,
Ask of the Master, what house is this?
If it is the Ka’ba, what means this idol-form?
And if it is the Magian temple, what means this light of God?
In this house is a treasure which the universe is too small to hold;
This ‘house’ and this ‘Master’ is all acting and pretence.
Lay no hand on the house, for this house is a talisman;
Speak not with the Master, for he is drunken overnight.
The dust and rubbish of this house is all musk and perfume,
The roof and door of this house is all verse and melody.
In fine, whoever has found his way into this house
Is the sultan of the world and the Solomon of the time.
O Master, bend down thy head once from this roof,
For in thy fair face is a token of fortune.
Like a mirror, the Soul has received thy image in its heart;
The tip of thy curl has sunk into its heart like a comb.
This is the Lord of Heaven, who resembles Venus and the moon;
This is the House of Love, which hath no bound or end.
—translated from the Persian by Reynold A. Nicholson
The Definition of Love
My Love is of a birth as rare
As ’tis, for object, strange and high;
It was begotten by Despair,
Upon Impossibility.
Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble hope could ne’er have flown,
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.
And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed;
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.
For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close;
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic power depose.
And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant poles have placed,
(Though Love’s whole world on us doth wheel),
Not by themselves to be embraced,
Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear.
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramp’d into a planisphere.
As lines, so love’s oblique, may well
Themselves in every angle greet:
But ours, so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.
Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.
from The Heroic Epistle
A spring there is whose silver waters show,
Clear as a glass, the shining sands below:
A flowery lotus spreads its arms above,
Shades all the banks and seems itself a grove;
Eternal greens the mossy margin grace,
Watched by the sylvan genius of the place:
Here as I lay, and swelled with tears the flood
Before my sight a watery virgin stood:
She stood and cried, ‘O you that love in vain,
Fly hence and seek the fair Leucadian main:
There stands a rock from whose impending steep
Apollo’s fane surveys the rolling deep;
There injured lovers, leaping from above,
Their flames extinguish and forget to love.
Deucalion once with hopeless fury burned;
In vain he loved, relentless Pyrrha scorned.
But when from hence he plunged into the main,
Deucalion scorned, and Pyrrha loved in vain.
Haste, Sappho, haste, from high Leucadia throw
Thy wretched weight, nor dread the deeps below.’
She spoke, and vanished with the voice: I rise,
And silent tears fall trickling from my eyes.
I go, ye nymphs, those rocks and seas to prove:
How much I fear, but ah, how much I love!
I go, ye nymphs, where furious love inspires;
Let female fears submit to female fires:
To rocks and seas I fly from Phaon’s hate,
And hope from seas and rocks a milder fate.
Ye gentle gales, beneath my body blow,
And softly lay me on the waves below.
And thou, kind Love, my sinking limbs sustain,
Spread thy soft wings and waft me o’er the main,
Nor let a lover’s death the guiltless flood profane.
On Phoebus’ shrine my harp I’ll then bestow,
And this inscription shall be placed below:—
‘Here she who sung, to him that did inspire,
Sappho to Phoebus consecrates her lyre:
What suits with Sappho, Phoebus, suits with thee;
The gift, the giver, and the god agree.’
—translated from the Latin by Alexander Pope
A Red, Red Rose
O my luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
O I will luve thee still, my dear
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!
And fare-thee-weel awhile!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ ’twere ten thousand miles.
O my luve’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
Hang up the swing of love today!
Hang the body and the mind between the arms of the beloved, in the ecstasy of love’s joy:
Bring the tearful streams of the rainy clouds to your eyes, and cover your heart with the shadow of darkness:
Bring your face nearer to his ear, and speak of the deepest longings of your heart.
Kabir says: ‘Listen to me brother! Bring the vision of the Beloved in your heart.’
—translated from Bengali by Rabindranath Tagore
The Clod and the Pebble
‘Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.’
So sang a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle’s feet;
But a Pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres meet:
‘Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight;
Joys in another’s loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.’
from The West-Eastern Divan
Book of books most wonderful
Is sure the book of Love;
Heedfully I have read it through;
Of joys some scanty leaves,
Whole sheets writ o’er with pain;
Separation forms a section,
Reunion a little chapter,
And that a fragment. Troubles run to volumes,
Drawn out with due elucidations,
Endless and measureless.
O Nisami!—yet at last
It was the right way thou didst find;
The insoluble, ah! who can solve it?
Lovers, when heart once more meets heart.
—translated from the German by Edward Dowden
from Sonnets from the Portuguese
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 the 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.
from The Rubaiyat
11
Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.
20
Ah! my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
TO-DAY of past Regrets and future Fears—
To-morrow?—Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday’s Sev’n Thousand Years.
21
Lo! some we loved, the loveliest and best
That Time and Fate of all their Vintage prest,
Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to Rest.
23
Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and—sans End!
Oh, come with old Khayyám, and leave the Wise
To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;
One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.
32
There was a Door to which I found no Key:
There was a Veil past which I could not see:
Some little Talk awhile of ME and THEE;
There seemed—and then no more of THEE and ME.
56
And this I know: whether the one True Light,
Kindle to Love, or Wrath consume me quite,
One Glimpse of It within the Tavern caught
Better than in the Temple lost outright.
73
Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits—and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!
—translated from the Persian by Edward Fitzgerald
from Give All to Love
Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good fame,
Plans, credit, and the muse;
Nothing refuse.
’Tis a brave master,
Let it have scope,
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope;
High and more high,
It dives into noon,
With wing unspent,
Untold intent;
But ’tis a god,
Knows its own path,
And the outlets of the sky.
’Tis not for the mean,
It requireth courage stout,
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending;
Such ’twill reward,
They shall return
More than they were,
And ever ascending.
Leave all for love;—
Yet, hear me, yet,
One word more thy heart behoved,
One pulse more of firm endeavor,
Keep thee to-day,
To-morrow, for ever,
Free as an Arab
Of thy beloved.
Cling with life to the maid;
But when the surprise,
Vague shadow of surmise,
Flits across her bosom young
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy-free,
Do not thou detain a hem,
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.
Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Tho’ her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive,
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.
from Tao Te Ching
I have three treasures, which I hold and keep safe:
The first is called love;
The second is called moderation;
The third is called not venturing to go ahead of the world.
Being loving, one can be brave;
Being moderate, one can be ample;
Not venturing to go ahead of the world, one can be the chief of all officials.
Instead of love, one has only bravery;
Instead of moderation, one has only amplitude;
Instead of keeping behind, one goes ahead:
These lead to nothing but death.
For he who fights with love will win the battle;
He who defends with love will be secure.
Heaven will save him, and protect him with love.
—from the Chinese, translated by Ch’u Ta-Kao ’
I Hid My Love
I hid my love when young till I
Couldn’t bear the buzzing of a fly;
I hid my love to my despite
Till I could not bear to look at light:
I dare not gaze upon her face
But left her memory in each place;
Where’er I saw a wild flower lie
I kissed and bade my love good-bye.
I met her in the greenest dells,
Where dewdrops pearl the wood bluebells;
The lost breeze kissed her bright blue eye,
The bee kissed and went singing by,
A sunbeam found a passage there,
A gold chain round her neck so fair;
As secret as the wild bee’s song
She lay there all the summer long.
I hid my love in field and town
Till e’en the breeze would knock me down;
The bees seemed singing ballads o’er,
The fly’s bass turned to lion’s roar;
And even the silence found a tongue,
To haunt me all the summer long;
The riddle nature could not prove
Was nothing else but secret love.
In Praise of Love
Love to the foolish giveth wit by great and potent art,
Love to the dumb or slow of speech can eloquence impart,
Can make the craven, shrinking coward valiant and strong of grow, heart,
Can by his power the sluggard spur out of his sleep to start.
Love to the young eternal youth can by his craft bestow,
The all-subduing might of eld can even overthrow;
Can make the face as swart as pitch full white and fair to grow
And give to those not worth a doit full many a grace, I trow.
The dolt, the fool, the slow of wit, the poor man or the base
Unto his mistress seemeth rich in every goodly grace.
Then he that loseth lady fair should straightway set his face
Toward finding one that worthily may fill her vacant place.
—translated from the Spanish by Ida Farnell
The Last Invocation
At the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the powerful fortress’d house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well-closed doors,
Let me be wafted.
Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper,
Set ope the doors, O Soul.
Tenderly—be not impatient
(Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh,
Strong is your hold, O love).
Sonnet CXVI
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! It is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.