Christina Rossetti is a favorite poet.
Here is one of her beautiful poems that is appropriate for today:
I loved you first, by Christina Rossetti.
I loved you first: but afterwards your love
Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
Which owes the other most? My love was long,
And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;
I loved and guessed at you, you construed me
And loved me for what might or might not be –
Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’
With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done,
For one is both and both are one in love:
Rich love knows nought of ‘thine that is not mine;’
Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.
Is it sad that my first thought was that this would be a likely selection for close reading? 😦
But *love* the poem itself! 🙂
This is a very different type of love poem, but a favorite of my mom’s and mine ever since I can remember. The love here is the kind I believe we all need more of in our lives. It is from the poem “Outwitted” by Edwin Markham.
“He drew a circle that shut me out-
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle and took him In !
Dear Diane,
If you liked that poem, you will probably also like a poem by A. Pushkin (1829), in its best translation by Alan Myers in “An Age Ago”:
A. Pushkin “I loved you once” (1829):
“I loved you once: of love, perhaps, an ember
Within my soul is not extinguished yet;
But let that be no prompting to remember,
Or be a cause of sadness or regret.
I loved you once, quite hopeless, dumbly tender,
By jealousy and diffidence oppressed;
I loved you once with such complete surrender
As may God grant you may again be blessed.”
From “An Age Ago: A Selection of Nineteenth-Century Russian Poetry” Paperback
Alan Myers (Translator), Joseph Brodsky (Compiler). ,