/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3469151]

Can we have a valentines thread? What to read if you're feeling a bit down today? Been looking at some sonnets from the bard to feel a little better.


My love is as a fever longing still,
For that which longer nurseth the disease;
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
At random from the truth vainly express'd;
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

[Anonymous No.3469156]

Rough magic for man's spellings must suffice
on moonlit height, in secret, and alone
the throat, the blade, the blood of sacrifice
must conjure his stark prayer to silent stone
a woman's sorceries are subtler things
dumb suppers, petal-oracles and sighs
enchantments writ on promises and rings
epithalamion and lullabyes
For love alone it seems a futile end
discrepant supplications to beguile
and join that which seems best disposed to rend
and such diverse rogation reconcile
But cupids bolts contrive to hearts combine
contrary pleas, in single valentine.

I've posted this twice this week, in dying threads. wrote it this time last year.

[Anonymous No.3469179]

[Anonymous No.3469189]

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
My sinful earth these rebel powers array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?
Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more:
So shall thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.

[Anonymous No.3469196]

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

[Anonymous No.3469198]

good New yorker today

http://www.newyorker.com/online/bls/books/2013/02/poet-of-piercing-lentines-on-robert-graves.html

[Anonymous No.3469207]

Without a loved one
it's hard to stay on the straight and narrow
Living the dream fuck bitches get the cream

[Anonymous No.3469231]

also the guardian's poetry reading for today...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/auo/2013/feb/14/love-poems-carol-anduffy-podcast