George Washington

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.

Shakespeare

No sooner met but they looked, no sooner looked but they loved, no sooner loved but they sighed, no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason.

Poem – Love, What Is Love

LOVE – what is love? A great and aching heart;
Wrung hands; and silence; and a long despair.
Life – what is life? Upon a moorland bare
To see love coming and see love depart.

Poem – By You I Long To Be Kissed

I would love too

As the window on the bus,
Steamed up I began to trace,
A heart shape with our names,
Written inside copied face to face.

Doodling in class I found myself,
Over and over scribbling the same,
Inside my book cover hidden writing,
My first and your last name.

On our school trip that day,
I took pictures with my phone,
Of us all in a group,
And my favourite of you alone.

I sit behind you in class,
You don’t even know I exist,
Mine is a one way crush,
By you I long to be kissed.

In my locker I did see,
A note which was hidden inside,
Which started Emily I have written,
The words that I could not find.

I had the courage to say,
That I have liked you from,
Afar and will you please be,
My date to this years prom.

Well who’d have thought he felt,
The same way as I do,
In a note from me to him,
I said I would love too.

Love – Rabia Al Basri

I have loved Thee with two loves –
a selfish love and a love that is worthy of Thee.
As for the love which is selfish,
Therein I occupy myself with Thee,
to the exclusion of all others.
But in the love which is worthy of Thee,
Thou dost raise the veil that I may see Thee.
Yet is the praise not mine in this or that,
But the praise is to Thee in both that and this.

Poem – My Love

itty-bitty,
teensy-weensy,
teeny-tiny,
itsy-bitsy.

that’s how
my love has been,
always.

itty-bitty,
teensy-weensy,
teeny-tiny,
itsy-bitsy.

Cherry Blossoms – Frank Gutsche

The trees: White as wedding gowns.

Shedding their blossoms, branches, crowns? 

Like tears embarrassed, blow away free. 

We sit. There is a path; under a tree. 
People pass us by; time is slowed, 

on a camera they’d fade into a blurred line; 

we speak, words bound, betrothed.

Your voice: comforting as I drink your wine. 
Were it not you, 

what would be: 

love? 

Were it not for you, 

What would I ask, 

what would I ask to be? 
Then I would float, 

Float on those embarrassed petals, 

white; 

I would float standing, watching.

Watching you and me; 

as you lean against me, 

you see me on a swirling petal: 

I float.

I look at you, 

and in one moment I would say: 

love’s eye is beyond one could ever see.
I am near you; 

yet so endlessly far away, 

floating in a blue sky, 

I do not touch the ground; 

were it not for you, 

what would be: 

love? 

Poem – Love

Sweet mother at the idle loom I lean

Weary with longing for the boy that Still

Remains a dream of loveliness  to fill

My soul, my life, at aphrodite’s will.

Poem – Cold Love

So cold you are
that sends chill to my bones

and freezes my soul 

but 

my heart still beats

In you…

though I’m gone.
Ohh my fears unknown

mutilate my dreams

and i saw

the heavenly arch 

burnt

and fell, 

a splendid failure it is

as i am melting 

in infinity. 

Poem – For Zee

I’m growing and growing, as quick as I can, 

According to Heaven’s intricate plan! 

I’m a butterfly baby, I’m heaven-sent, 

My kisses are magic, to an incredible extent! 

I’m dancing thru’ life, each day is a song, 

I write the lyrics, now c’mon sing along! 

My life is a cakewalk, an exciting game, 

My high fashion sense, puts Brittney to shame! 

Lessons are easy, and studying is fun, 

At the end of the day, my homework is done! 

I wake up to Mum, and Dad’s hearty laughter, 

I love to watch them, live happily ever after! 

Our home is a haven, of peace and delight, 

We chase troubles away, and make things alright! 

Of course there are times, when I wear a frown, 

But then I do hand-stands, and turn it around! 

How utterly awesome, how blessed to be, 

amazing, spectacular, PHENOMENAL me! 

Poem – An Acrostic

Elizabeth it is in vain you say 

‘Love not’ — thou sayest it in so sweet a way: 

In vain those words from thee or L. E. L. 

Zantippe’s talents had enforced so well: 

Ah! if that language from thy heart arise, 

Breathe it less gently forth — and veil thine eyes. 

Endymion, recollect, when Luna tried 

To cure his love — was cured of all beside — 

His folly — pride — and passion — for he died. 

Philosophy of Love – Tulsi Shrestha

 The pages of rhythm of my own life

Never matched with content of rhymes.

Like a couple, one can’t see 

and another can’t hear.

She cannot perceive the most enchanting 

voice and melody of her own beloved.

He cannot watch the most gorgeous 

beauty of his own beloved. 

Still they are perfect and ideal couple

in reflection of society and culture.

All his songs reveal beauty of femininity.

But none of them create image in mirror.

Her beloved prepared a full page of essay

explaining excellence of music and melody. 

She is beyond his imagination.

He is indeed beyond her perception. 

But souls of these two, 

dissolve inside one platform.

Both of them remind it as

ecstasy of passionate 

Love.
The pages of rhythm of my own life

Never matched with content of rhymes.

Like a couple, one can’t see 

and another can’t hear.

She cannot perceive the most enchanting 

voice and melody of her own beloved.

He cannot watch the most gorgeous 

beauty of his own beloved. 

Still they are perfect and ideal couple

in reflection of society and culture.

All his songs reveal beauty of femininity.

But none of them create image in mirror.

Her beloved prepared a full page of essay

explaining excellence of music and melody. 

She is beyond his imagination.

He is indeed beyond her perception. 

But souls of these two, 

dissolve inside one platform.

Both of them remind it as

ecstasy of passionate 

Love. 

Tie Your Heart At Night To Mine, Love – Pablo Neruda

Tie your heart at night to mine, love, 

and both will defeat the darkness 

like twin drums beating in the forest 

against the heavy wall of wet leaves. 
Night crossing: black coal of dream 

that cuts the thread of earthly orbs 

with the punctuality of a headlong train 

that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly. 
Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement, 

to the grip on life that beats in your breast, 

with the wings of a submerged swan, 
So that our dream might reply 

to the sky’s questioning stars 

with one key, one door closed to shadow.

Love – Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

Are you fleeing from Love because of a single humiliation? 

What do you know of Love except the name? 

Love has a hundred forms of pride and disdain, 

and is gained by a hundred means of persuasion. 

Since Love is loyal, it purchases one who is loyal: 

it has no interest in a disloyal companion. 

The human being resembles a tree; its root is a covenant with God: 

that root must be cherished with all one’s might. 

A weak covenant is a rotten root, without grace or fruit. 

Though the boughs and leaves of the date palm are green, 

greenness brings no benefit if the root is corrupt. 

If a branch is without green leaves, yet has a good root,

a hundred leaves will put forth their hands in the end.

Love – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

We cannot live, except thus mutually 

We alternate, aware or unaware, 

The reflex act of life: and when we bear 

Our virtue onward most impulsively, 

Most full of invocation, and to be 

Most instantly compellant, certes, there 

We live most life, whoever breathes most air 

And counts his dying years by sun and sea. 

But when a soul, by choice and conscience, doth 

Throw out her full force on another soul, 

The conscience and the concentration both make 

mere life, Love. For Life in perfect whole 

And aim consummated, is Love in sooth, 

As nature’s magnet-heat rounds pole with pole.

English Poem – Against Wrongs Done Me – Terry Dawson

Against Wrongs Done Me
Against wrongs done me
My spirit raged
Hatred-blinded, I cannot see
That lust for vengeance
Keeps my spirit caged.

Great misfortune I wish upon my foe.
In imaginings I see
Him downfallen; his life blood aflow,
His discomforts all serve
To unleash my spiteful glee

All-demanding becomes my ire,
Unstinting do I spend
To fuel the all-consuming fire,
That feeds the demon, Wroth
That plain forbids an end.

Now unfurls a new design,
Unscripted lines are penned,
Up-ending all cruel schemes of mine –
Death stalks my halls; I fear
For my untimely end.

Spared from death, I behold
Life in different light,
New horizons promise gifts untold;
Sunshine pours like healing balm into
My long, hate-filled dark night.

My heart forgives all, of him
Who earned my enmity
And as by a whim
His dark, all-overshadowing cloud
Is gone and I am free!

Glad, unbound, my soul exalts,
My spirit learns to sing
Unencumbered by past faults,
Constrained no more by baleful hate
the crippled bird takes wing!

English Poem – I’ve Met a Girl – Terry Dawson

I’ve met a girl
Louise her name.
Within I feel new strength unfurl
And I’m no more the same.

Strange to myself, now am I
Renewed in mind and heart,
My load lighter than before, and why? –
Her magic weaves its art.

Recipient me
Of friendship’s gift
Strength-giver she
Sure, true and swift
As ever friend could be.

By her, unaware, is it arranged
That life comes anew into a soul,
And so is lonesomeness estranged;
A life reacquainted with it’s goal.

English Poem – Love – Hafiz Quasim

Love everything and love the love you love

Love is a word an incomparable anticipation
love is a mockery having wings to fly
Love is decorum of truth the legacy of attention
Love is not concocted story or a piece of bun
Love is what you are
what you do the whole nook of function
Let this love never stop in its infinite motion
Love is beauty for eternal one’s and ailment for an alien
Love is sombre of truth and desire nonetheless mitigation
Love is so on and so forth love is being and becoming
Love is genre of onerous charm and sea’s combustion
Love is holistic it is winsome will of norm
Love is bird’s chirping
love a clandestine click of commotion

O Never Say That I Was False of Heart – William Shakespeare

O never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seem’d my flame to qualify:
As easy might I from myself depart
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie;

That is my home of love; if I have ranged,
Like him that travels, I return again,
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my stain.

Never believe, though in my nature reign’d
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stain’d
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good:

For nothing this wide universe I call,
Save thou, my rose: in it thou art my all.