How Do I Love Thee
Poet: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee
Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints -
I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
You are my one and only,
One I care to love.
The one and only person,
The one I hold high above.
The one and only person,
I give everything to.
The one and only person,
I know will be true.
You are a person,
I know everything about.
Yet you are a person,
I'm always trying to figure out.
You are my person,
Who I can always count on.
Someone who will never,
Turn around and be just be gone.
I've always hoped to find,
A person just like you.
And I'm thankful that I found,
Someone who always comes through.
O My Love
Poet: S. Naidu
Cover mine eyes, O my Love!
Mine eyes that are weary of bliss
As of light that is poignant and strong.
Oh, silence my lips with a kiss,
My lips that are weary of song!
Shelter my soul, O my Love!
My soul is bent low with the pain
And the burden of love, like the grace
Of a flower that is smitten with rain;
Oh, shelter my soul from thy face!
Today
Poet: Edmond de Goncourt
Today I begin to understand
What love must be, if it exists...
When we are parted,
We each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves.
We are incomplete like a book
In two volumes of which the first has been lost.
That is what I imagine love to be:
Incompleteness in absence.
Indeed I Love You
Poet: Unknown
Indeed I love you for your gentle eyes;
Soft as a Summer eve�s distant view;
I love you for the soul that lies
Beaming in their far off ocean hue.
I love you for you are wondrous fair;
Yea, as the loveliest of all your race;
I love you for your rich waving hair,
The streams� round your sunny face.
Then tell me we may meet again,
Ere the long Summer days are o�re,
That my love, my heart�s fond refrain
Find an echo down on the rivers short.
Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt Truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love!
I Love You
Poet: Roy Croft
I love you,
Not only for what you are,
But for what I am
When I am with you.
I love you,
Not only for what
You have made of yourself,
But for what you are making of me.
I love you
For the part of me
That you bring out;
I love you
For putting your hand into my heaped-up heart
And passing over all the foolish, weak things
That you can't help dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out into the light
All the beautiful belongings that no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find.
I love you
Because you are helping me to make
Of the lumber of my life not a tavern
But a temple; out of the works
Of my every day not a reproach
But a song.
I love you
Because you have done
More than any creed could have done
To make me good, and more than any fate
Could have done to make me happy.
You have done it without a touch,
Without a word, without a sign.
You have done it by being yourself.
Perhaps that is what being a friend means,
After all.