Friday, March 13, 2015
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Monday, December 28, 2009
Come live with me and be my love
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of th purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.
The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
Christopher Marlowe
Monday, December 14, 2009
Love Spells
By Anna Lynn Sibal
Do you believe in magic? Is there something that you want for your love life that you think you will not be able to have through the usual, ordinary means? If that is the case and you really want whatever it is so badly, then you can try to cast a magical love spell.
In this modern day and age, magical love spells may be nothing more than a figment of fancy for most people. Magic is found only in books and movies with fantasy settings. Moreover, scientific advancements that marked this era have made a skeptic of a lot of people. Nobody believes in magic anymore, except for a few select groups like the Wiccans.
And yet, the idea of magic has always held a mark on our psyche and has always done so since the beginning of time. Civilizations that existed in ancient times practiced their own brand of magic before the advent of Christianity. It was not just the Celts; the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, and even the Chinese did. Until now, there are still people all over the world who do some form of folk magic, especially in less urbanized communities.
Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes
First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.
And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.
Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.
You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.
The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.
Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.
What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.
So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset
and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.
~ Billy Collins