Poetry
By Evan Mantyk
For Valentine’s Day, I offer you some love poems for almost any situation. The first poem, by the great poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, is perfect if you are shy; Shelley is forward enough for centuries of wooing. The second, by living poet Reid McGrath of Pawling, New York, is perfect for the new love interest. The last, by living poet Amy Foreman of Arizona, is long, but perfect for relationships on the rocks.
Love’s Philosophy
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?—
See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?
Valentine
By Reid McGrath
I didn’t know when Valentine’s Day was, and didn’t need to.
That day came and went like any other.
Now I know it cause you’re perfect, dear; you don’t know what you've meant to me, my life, completely ignorant to Love which waters a lush Happiness, as if my rose-like heart were pinched and pent up in my dry yet sunless parched chest.
You have refreshed; you irrigate my heart.
You’re water and you're sunshine and you’re air that's unpolluted: cool then warm. You part the darkness of my isolated lair.
Now fertile is my chest; and a Love grows,
and now you are my Heart; you are my Rose.
Ballad: Our Crew of Two
By Amy Foreman
When we set forth, the breeze blew fair,
The sun shone balmy, warm.
Our sheets were fixed; sail filled with air,
No warning of the storm.
Our crew of two, so cheerfully, With confidence untried,