Blow, you wintry winds

Blow, you wintry winds,
Blow cold, blow cruel.
Blow how ye will,
Your chill can ne'er compare
To the coldness in his heart.
December's frigid gale
Is warmer than is he:
So cold, so cruel.
So blow, you wintry winds,
And moan for this poor fool
Whose heart's a frozen sea:
Now cold, now cruel,
Who ne'er looks back at me.


.

The night

“A man is a very small thing, and the night is very large and full of wonders.”

--Lord Dunsany

Blue Moon

True love, like the blue moon, only comes now and then.
It comes unexpectedly, you never know when
That "someone" so special, who's meant just for you
Will enter your life, make your world feel brand new.
Be patient, my heart, be patient  and strong
For just once in a blue moon real love comes along.
--Rinda Nelson

Remembrance

Forgetting much,
remembering more,
our words returned to me
as friends unseen for years
appear, and all is as it was
before they went away.
That's how it is tonight,
and I can almost hear
the songs we used to sing.
The back and forth refrain
still echoes through my heart.
How happily this wound is born!

Loneliness

“Loneliness is the first thing which God's eye named, not good.”

--John Milton

Kate and Petruchio

"Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labor both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe,
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks, and true obedience-
Too little payment for so great a debt."
--Kate in William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew

Old October

"All things on earth point home in old October: sailors to sea, travellers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken."--Thomas Wolfe 

Shine on...

...shine on, harvest moon up in the sky...

Again

Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain
Of evening rain,
Unravelled from the tumbling main,
And threading the eye of a yellow star: -
So many times do I love again.
--Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Eternal

“The dawn is not distant, nor is the night starless; love is eternal.”

 

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Absence

Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire.  
--François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

Summer night

"Summer night -
even the stars
are whispering to each other."
  --Kobayashi Issa

Choices

“Some choices we live not only once but a thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives.”

--Richard Bach

Eventide

Peacefully the quiet stars came out, one after one;
The holy twilight fell upon the sea,
The Summer day was done.
--Celia Thaxter

Under the full moon

"Under the full moon, life is all adventure." 

-Sigurd Olson, The Singing Wilderness

After all

You were never really there,
and I never really met you;
I dreamed you--
though you seemed so very real.

There is nothing to remember,
so why can't I forget you?
Why do I feel you near
when you were never there?

The waxing moon

Nothing that is can pause or stay;
The moon will wax, the moon will wane,
The mist and cloud will turn to rain,
The rain to mist and cloud again,
Tomorrow be today. 
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sea

"You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water."
--Rabindranath Tagore

Sweet

“Sweet the coming on 

Of grateful evening mild; then silent night 

With this her solemn bird and this fair moon, 

And these the gems of heaven, her starry train.”

--John Milton

Feet of Clay

There you stand,

trying to hide them--

those feet of clay.
But it's too late:
I've seen them.
No, I won't run away.

Wherever you are

Where are you, my childhood friend?
Lost and alone, or safe and warm?
Out of harm's way? Oh, may it be so!
You are gone from sight, and yet
each night I pray that you
sleep peacefully
beneath moon and stars
wherever you are.

Books

“For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men lived and worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.”

--Amy Lowell

Now the moon...

“Slowly, silently, now the moon
 Walks the night in her silver shoon.”

--Walter de la Mare

Under the haystack, fast asleep...

At the Twilight Hour

A soft, sweet fragrance in the air
Of dew-wet flowers. Everywhere
A tender, restful silence lies,

Born of the misty, distant skies;
Whence twilight shadows slowly fall,
Like gauzy curtains, over all.
The meadows stretch so mistily,
Far as my longing eyes can see;
And yonder forest hides away
In its own darkness from the day;
And tinkling cow-bells ring in time
To yonder streamlet's slumbrous chime;
And o'er sweet Nature's paling face
Night letteth down her veil apace.

-- Mary Dow Brine (1816-1913)

Even a small star

“Even a small star shines in the darkness”

 

--Finnish Proverb 

Twilight

“Twilight drops her curtain down, and pins it with a star.”

 

--Lucy Maud Montgomery

“No star is ever lost we once have seen,

We always may be what we might have been.”

 

--Adelaide Anne Proctor

Stars

"There wouldn't be a sky full of stars
 if we were all meant to wish on the same one."
- Frances Clark

Lo! in thine honest eyes I read

Lo! in thine honest eyes I read
The auspicious beacon that shall lead,
After long sailing in deep seas,
To quiet havens in June ease.
Thy voice sings like an inland bird
First by the seaworn sailor heard;
And like road sheltered from life's sea
Thine honest heart is unto me.
--Robert Louis Stevenson

O bed!

O bed! O bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head.

~Thomas Hood, Miss Kilmansegg - Her Dream

Her sleeping world

"Heaven's ebon vault, studded with stars unutterably bright, through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, seems like a canopy which love has spread to curtain her sleeping world.”

--Percy Bysshe Shelley

Serene

"The plainest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness: her state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.”

--Michel de Montaigne

There

“I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it.”

--Albert Einstein

Beds of roses

And I will make thee beds
of Roses
And a thousand
fragrant Posies.
--Christopher Marlowe

At Night

The wind is singing through the trees to-night,

A deep-voiced song of rushing cadences

And crashing intervals. No summer breeze

Is this, though hot July is at its height,

Gone is her gentler music; with delight

She listens to this booming like the seas,

These elemental, loud necessities

Which call to her to answer their swift might.

Above the tossing trees shines down a star,

Quietly bright; this wild, tumultuous joy

Quickens nor dims its splendour. And my mind,

O Star! is filled with your white light, from far,

So suffer me this one night to enjoy

The freedom of the onward sweeping wind.
--Amy Lowell

One friend

There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one's self, the very meaning of one's soul.  

--Edith Wharton

Only the deepest secrets

"O no," she said, "you can't say just anything to the wind. Only the deepest secrets will do; and also you must not use the letter i." 

- Story People

Dear friend

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.

~William Shakespeare

When the full moon is shining

"Tell me what you feel in your room
     when the full moon is shining in upon you
     and your lamp is dying out,
     and I will tell you how old you are
     and I shall know if you are happy."
--Henri Frederic Amiel

   

Hope

Hope, like the gleaming taper's light,
Adorns and cheers our way;
And still, as darker grows the night,
Emits a brighter ray.

--Oliver Goldsmith

Again

We will meet again:
I know not where,
I know not when.
Yet--as sure as birds
fly over the sea,
the day will dawn
when once again
you'll come to me.

Letters

Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls; for, thus friends absent speak.  

~John Donne

First

Were I a cloud

Were I a cloud I'd gather 
My skirts up in the air, 
And fly well know whither, 
And rest I well know where.
--Robert Bridges

Sky

"A sky as pure as water bathed the stars and brought them out."

--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Vanished

You have vanished, disappeared,
and I am left to wonder
why it all turned out this way.
I find no answers, only questions,
as I gaze up at the sky, remembering.

You were real, and you were warm;
your arms were my safe harbor. 
Then I turned and you were gone
though you never said goodbye.
The silence echoes still; the night is trembling.

“Life may change, but it may fly not;
Hope may vanish, but can die not;
Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;
Love repulsed, - but it returneth.”

--Percy Bysshe Shelley

To the one who knew

Can you go back in time
To a place in your mind
To the one who knew
A part of you
That you just couldn't find?
If you asked me to choose
Between a memory or two
When it's said and done
I'd take the one
Whose love I had to lose.
--from the song When She Danced by David Foster

June night

If a June night could talk,
it would probably boast it invented romance.
-- Bern Williams