the classics, blazed

public domain poems

[poemsablaze]

Negative Love

by John Donne

I NEVER stoop'd so low, as they Which on an eye, cheek, lip, can prey ;     Seldom to them which soar no higher     Than virtue, or the mind to admire. For sense and understanding may     Know what gives fuel to their fire ; My love, though silly, is more brave ; For may I miss, whene'er I crave, If I know yet what I would have.

If that be simply perfectest, Which can by no way be express'd     But negatives, my love is so.     To all, which all love, I say no. If any who deciphers best,     What we know not—ourselves—can know, Let him teach me that nothing. This As yet my ease and comfort is, Though I speed not, I cannot miss.

[poemsablaze]

Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

by William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, 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.

[poemsablaze]

Sonnet XVIII

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 gold complexion dimm’d, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,     So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,     So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.