The Journey: The Story of Jaime & Brienne in Poetry, Part I
For a long time I've enjoyed finding poetry pieces that resonate with the story of the couple I'm currently shipping. The genesis of a new project is often the moment of dissonance when I read a poem of a different era or tone from the subject/couple I have in mind. I didn't start shipping Jaime and Brienne thinking I was going to do this sort of project, but shortly after I got interested in them, I was reading an anthology of contemporary poetry and came across a poem that struck me with its imagery and the potential parallels to JB. I was quickly intrigued with the challenge presented by the gender role subversion and the focus on inner beauty/unconventional appearances. And as the collection has continued to develop, I found new layers and shades of meaning, even in pieces I had selected long before.
I'm still processing how JB's story unfolded onscreen, but I thank George R.R. Martin for the creation of these characters and David Benioff and D.B. Weiss for making it possible for us to view their story in a visual medium. I've attempted to present a narrative flow with these selections, so that most of the prominent beats in their stories are established or alluded to (up to a point where I've chosen to leave off). One challenge has been balancing the use of images (which tell the tale from the show) and beats from the books that I wanted to address. As a result, I've taken liberties to include images from the show with a slightly altered interpretation that, in some cases, may refer to elements included in POV portions of the novels. I hope fans of Jaime and Brienne (in one or all forms) can find something to enjoy in this compilation.
This project is dedicated to Gwendoline Christie and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau for the enthusiasm, joy, and thoughtfulness that they poured into the portrayals of Jaime and Brienne. Their commitment to the characters resulted in one of the most beautiful and transformative love stories I've had the privilege to watch. Thanks also to Ramin Djwadi, whose work supported that story so powerfully.
I felt it an appropriate time to share this project on the anniversary of JBO. Thank you to all the members for your insight, your warmth, and your humor, and to the administrators and moderators for the many hours of hard work maintaining this special corner of the internet. The pleasure that I've derived from shipping Jaime and Brienne was enhanced immeasurably by this community.
Disclaimer: All images and literary works featured here belong to their respective owners; I've just arranged them in an attempt to capture the essence of Jaime and Brienne's journey. In the instance of titled works, I've named the author and title of the piece, indicating "from (title)" in the case of excerpts from larger works. In the case of untitled works, I have cited the author when the work is used in full or cited the author and first line if that is not included in the portion presented here. For translated works, I have attempted to cite the translator. I apologize in advance for the (sometimes drastic) fluctuations in image quality/lighting/color/etc. as I've worked on editing the images in spurts over the course of several years. Many thanks to WackyGoofball for her willingness to read and offer feedback when this project was in early stages, and to the ladies in the fan art section who provided helpful tips and guidance on image editing.
I'm hoping to share approximately the first half of the project today and the rest tomorrow.
How prone we are to sin; how sweet were made
The pleasures our resistless hearts invade.
Of all my crimes, the breach of all thy laws,
Love, soft bewitching love, has been the cause.
~Aphra Behn, from “And Forgive Us Our Trespasses”
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud:
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbow’d.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
~William Ernest Henley, “Invictus”
This is life’s sorrow:
That one can be happy only where two are;
And that our hearts are drawn to stars
Which want us not.
~Edgar Lee Masters, from “Herbert Marshall”
I took that hand which lay so still,
Alas! my own was full as chill,
I had not strength to stir, or strive,
But felt that I was still alive-
A frantic feeling, when we know
That what we love shall ne’er be so.
I know not why
I could not die,
I had no earthly hope-but faith,
And that forbade a selfish death.
~Lord Byron, from “The Prisoner of Chillon”
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts quietly-. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.
~Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Panther”
(translated by Stephen Mitchell)
It’s all the same to me, captive
lion what faces I move through
bristling, or what human crowd will
cast me out as it must
into myself, into my separate internal
world, a Kamchatka bear without ice.
Where I fail to fit in (and I’m not trying) or
where I’m humiliated it’s all the same.
~Marina Tsvetaeva, from “Homesickness”
(translated by Elaine Feinstein)
Dear Fisher Nun,
disliking the sad sea of life,
you took up these habits,
but, even so, give me a wink
and a nibble of ‘see-weed’.
~The Tales of Ise, 104
(translated by Peter MacMillan)
If you hear the rush, the swish of mottled sand
and dust kicked up under the striving paws,
its cessation, falling into the sharp and brittle grass
like the tick of a tin roof under sun
or hint of rain that nightly wakes you,
try to stand your ground. Try not to scream,
for it devalues you. That tawny head and burled
mange, the flattened ears of its sleek engine
will seem only a blur, a shock, a shadow
across your neck that leaves you cold.
It may seem soft, barely a blow,
more like a falling, an exquisite giving
of yourself to the ground, made numb
by those eyes. It may be easier just to watch,
for fighting will only prolong things,
and you will have no time to notice the sky,
the texture of dust, what incredible leaves
the trees have. Instead, focus on your life,
its crimson liquor he grows drunk on.
Notice the way the red highlights his face,
how the snub nose is softened, the lips made
fuller; notice his deft musculature, his rapture,
because in all of creation there is not art
to compare with such elegance, such simplicity.
Notice this and remember it,
this way in which you became beautiful
when you thought there was nothing more.
~Michael Johnson, “How to be Eaten by a Lion”
When the ocean comes to you as a lover,
marry, at once, quickly,
for God’s sake!
Don’t postpone it!
Existence has no better gift.
No amount of searching
will find this.
A perfect falcon, for no reason,
has landed on your shoulder,
and become yours.
~Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)
The captive raised her hand and pressed it to her brow;
“I have been struck,” she said, “and I am suffering now;
Yet these are little worth, your bolts and irons strong,
And, were they forged in steel, they could not hold me long.”
Hoarse laughed the jailer grim: “Shall I be won to hear;
Dost think, fond, dreaming wretch, that I shall grant thy prayer?
Or, better still, wilt melt my master’s heart with groans?
Ah! sooner might the sun thaw down these granite stones.
“My master’s voice is low, his aspect bland and kind,
But hard as hardest flint, the soul that lurks behind;
And I am rough and rude, yet not more rough to see
Than is the hidden ghost that has its home in me.”
~Emily Bronte, from “The Prisoner (a fragment)”
Lonelier now, dependent on one another
utterly, though not knowing one another at all,
we no longer lay out each path as a lovely meander,
but straight ahead…
~Rainer Maria Rilke, from Sonnet XXIV (Sonnets to Orpheus, Part I)
(translated by Stephen Mitchell)
From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,
I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood;
Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curved neck and side-falling head;
His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody stump
And has not yet looked on it…
~Walt Whitman, from “Drum-Taps”
I go on in the dark, lit from within; does day exist?
Is this my grave, or the womb of my mother?
Something beats against my skin like a cold
stone that starts to grow warm, scarlet, tender.
Maybe I’m still waiting to be born,
or maybe I’ve been dead all the time. Darkness rules me.
If life is this, I wonder what death would be…
~Miguel Hernandez, from “I go on in the dark”
(translated by Timothy Baland)
Tired companion, I see you in my heart.
I read your eyes, sad friend.
In your breast you carry cold, hunger, nothing.
You have broken what’s left of the courage within you.
~Primo Levi, from “Buna”
(translated by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann)
My friend, be not like him who sits by his fireside and watches the fire go out, then blows vainly upon the dead ashes. Do not give up hope or yield to despair because of that which is past, for to bewail the irretrievable is the worst of human frailties.
~Kahlil Gibran, from “The Voice of the Master”
(translated by Anthony R. Ferris)
Today I realize
that my spirit has rusted
to a degree
I shall not be able
to shine it again.
***
If the past is spread behind me
and the future is spread before me,
in this there is the comfort
of my current struggle.
~Mahmud Shurayh, from “How can I escape this busy life”
(translated by Aziz Shihab)
Nothing in this world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,
nothing can surpass it.
The soft overcomes the hard;
the gentle overcomes the rigid.
Everyone knows this is true,
but few can put it into practice.
~Lao-tzu, from “Tao Te Ching” Chapter 78
(translated by Stephen Mitchell)
If you are still here with me, if in this darkness
there is still some place where your spirit resonates
on the shallow soundwaves stirred up by my voice:
hear me; help me. We can so easily
slip back from what we have struggled to attain,
abruptly, into a life we never wanted;
can find that we are trapped, as in a dream,
and die there, without ever waking up.
This can occur. Anyone who has lifted
his blood into a years-long work may find
that he can’t sustain it, the force of gravity
is irresistible, and it falls back, worthless.
For somewhere there is an ancient enmity
between our daily life and the great work.
Help me, in saying it, to understand it.
~Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Requiem for a Friend”
(translated by Stephen Mitchell)
…there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.
~Milan Kundera, from The Unbearable Lightness of Being
(translated by Michael Henry Heim)
In you I waver, fall
and rise up burning.
You among all beings
have the right
to see me weak…
~Pablo Neruda, from “The Hurt”
(translated by Donald D. Walsh)
Tell me, O people, tell me!
Who among you would not wake from the sleep of life
if love were to brush your spirit with its fingertips?
~Kahlil Gibran, from “At the Gate of the Temple”
(translated by John Walbridge)
The face of all the world is changed, I think,
Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul
Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole
Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink
Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink,
Was caught up into love, and taught the whole
Of life in a new rhythm…
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning, from Sonnet VII (from the Portuguese)
How clear she shines! How quietly
I lie beneath her guardian light;
While heaven and earth are whispering me,
‘Tomorrow, wake, but, dream to-night’…
~Emily Bronte, from “How Clear She Shines”
When you long for blessings that you may not name, and when you grieve knowing not the cause, then indeed you are growing with all things that grow, and rising toward your greater self.
~Kahlil Gibran, from “Sand and Foam”
Your love
Should never be offered to the mouth of a
Stranger,
Only to someone
Who has the valor and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife
Then weave them into a blanket
To protect you.
~Hafiz, from "Some Fill With Each Good Rain"
(interpreted by Daniel Landinsky)
Friend, our closeness is this:
anywhere you put your foot, feel me
in the firmness under you.
~Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)
One soul is aflame with a godlike passion,
One plays with love in an idler’s fashion,
One speaks and the other hears.
One sobs, ‘I love you,’ and wet eyes show it,
And one laughs lightly, and says, ‘I know it,’
With smiles for the other’s tears.
One lives for the other and nothing beside,
And the other remembers the world is wide.
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from “The Way of It”
In former days we’d both agree
That you were me, and I was you.
What has now happened to us two,
That you are you, and I am me?
~Bhartrhari
(translated by John Brough)
I told my heart, “I can’t endure this tyranny!
He’s nothing, no one! What’s this bully’s love to me?”
My little heart, you’re like a boundless sea, it seems;
And common sense? A splinter somewhere on that sea.
~Jahan Malek Khatun
(translated by Dick Davis)
Deceive the foolish world-deceive it on,
And veil your passions in your pride;
But now I’ve found your feebles by my own,
From me the needful fraud you cannot hide…
~Aphra Behn, from “On Desire. A Pindaric”
I do not love thee!-no! I do not love thee!
And yet when thou art absent I am sad;
And envy even the bright blue sky above thee,
Whose quiet stars may see thee and be glad.
I do not love thee!-yet, I know not why,
Whate’er thou dost seems still well done, to me:
And often in my solitude I sigh
That those I do love are not more like thee!
I do not love thee!-yet, when thou art gone,
I hate the sound (though those who speak be dear)
Which breaks the lingering echo of the tone
Thy voice of music leaves upon my ear.
I do not love thee!-yet thy speaking eyes,
With their deep, bright, and most expressive blue,
Between me and the midnight heaven arise,
Oftener than any eyes I ever knew.
I know I do not love thee! yet, alas!
Others will scarcely trust my candid heart;
And oft I catch them smiling as they pass,
Because they see me gazing where thou art.
~Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton
…Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are-
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from “Ulysses”
…And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A Traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.
~William Wordsworth, from “She was a Phantom of delight”
You cannot look in his eyes
Because your pulse must not say
What must not be said.
~Gwendolyn Brooks, from “To Be in Love”
I am the one without hope, the word without echoes,
he who lost everything and he who had everything.
Last hawser, in you creaks my last longing.
In my barren land you are the final rose.
~Pablo Neruda, from Love Poem VIII
(translated by Cristina Garcia)
Only-but this is rare-
When a belovèd hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,
Our eyes can in another’s eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen’d ear
Is by the tones of a loved voice caress’d-
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.
A man becomes aware of his life’s flow,
And hears its winding murmur; and he sees
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.
~Matthew Arnold, from “The Buried Life”
Where waters smoothest run, there deepest are the fords,
The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move;
The firmest faith is found in fewest words,
The turtles do not sing, and yet they love;
True hearts have ears and eyes, no tongues to speak;
They hear and see, and sigh, and then they break.
~Sir Edward Dyer, from “A Silent Love”
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forebore, . .
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes, the tears of two.
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet VI (from the Portuguese)
With all my will, but much against my heart,
We two now part.
My Very Dear,
Our solace is, the sad road lies so clear.
It needs no art,
With faint, averted feet
And many a tear,
In our opposed paths to persevere.
Go thou to East, I West.
We will not say
There’s any hope, it is so far away.
But, O, my Best….
~Coventry Patmore, from “A Farewell”
I'm still processing how JB's story unfolded onscreen, but I thank George R.R. Martin for the creation of these characters and David Benioff and D.B. Weiss for making it possible for us to view their story in a visual medium. I've attempted to present a narrative flow with these selections, so that most of the prominent beats in their stories are established or alluded to (up to a point where I've chosen to leave off). One challenge has been balancing the use of images (which tell the tale from the show) and beats from the books that I wanted to address. As a result, I've taken liberties to include images from the show with a slightly altered interpretation that, in some cases, may refer to elements included in POV portions of the novels. I hope fans of Jaime and Brienne (in one or all forms) can find something to enjoy in this compilation.
This project is dedicated to Gwendoline Christie and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau for the enthusiasm, joy, and thoughtfulness that they poured into the portrayals of Jaime and Brienne. Their commitment to the characters resulted in one of the most beautiful and transformative love stories I've had the privilege to watch. Thanks also to Ramin Djwadi, whose work supported that story so powerfully.
I felt it an appropriate time to share this project on the anniversary of JBO. Thank you to all the members for your insight, your warmth, and your humor, and to the administrators and moderators for the many hours of hard work maintaining this special corner of the internet. The pleasure that I've derived from shipping Jaime and Brienne was enhanced immeasurably by this community.
Disclaimer: All images and literary works featured here belong to their respective owners; I've just arranged them in an attempt to capture the essence of Jaime and Brienne's journey. In the instance of titled works, I've named the author and title of the piece, indicating "from (title)" in the case of excerpts from larger works. In the case of untitled works, I have cited the author when the work is used in full or cited the author and first line if that is not included in the portion presented here. For translated works, I have attempted to cite the translator. I apologize in advance for the (sometimes drastic) fluctuations in image quality/lighting/color/etc. as I've worked on editing the images in spurts over the course of several years. Many thanks to WackyGoofball for her willingness to read and offer feedback when this project was in early stages, and to the ladies in the fan art section who provided helpful tips and guidance on image editing.
I'm hoping to share approximately the first half of the project today and the rest tomorrow.
How prone we are to sin; how sweet were made
The pleasures our resistless hearts invade.
Of all my crimes, the breach of all thy laws,
Love, soft bewitching love, has been the cause.
~Aphra Behn, from “And Forgive Us Our Trespasses”
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud:
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbow’d.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
~William Ernest Henley, “Invictus”
This is life’s sorrow:
That one can be happy only where two are;
And that our hearts are drawn to stars
Which want us not.
~Edgar Lee Masters, from “Herbert Marshall”
I took that hand which lay so still,
Alas! my own was full as chill,
I had not strength to stir, or strive,
But felt that I was still alive-
A frantic feeling, when we know
That what we love shall ne’er be so.
I know not why
I could not die,
I had no earthly hope-but faith,
And that forbade a selfish death.
~Lord Byron, from “The Prisoner of Chillon”
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts quietly-. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.
~Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Panther”
(translated by Stephen Mitchell)
It’s all the same to me, captive
lion what faces I move through
bristling, or what human crowd will
cast me out as it must
into myself, into my separate internal
world, a Kamchatka bear without ice.
Where I fail to fit in (and I’m not trying) or
where I’m humiliated it’s all the same.
~Marina Tsvetaeva, from “Homesickness”
(translated by Elaine Feinstein)
Dear Fisher Nun,
disliking the sad sea of life,
you took up these habits,
but, even so, give me a wink
and a nibble of ‘see-weed’.
~The Tales of Ise, 104
(translated by Peter MacMillan)
If you hear the rush, the swish of mottled sand
and dust kicked up under the striving paws,
its cessation, falling into the sharp and brittle grass
like the tick of a tin roof under sun
or hint of rain that nightly wakes you,
try to stand your ground. Try not to scream,
for it devalues you. That tawny head and burled
mange, the flattened ears of its sleek engine
will seem only a blur, a shock, a shadow
across your neck that leaves you cold.
It may seem soft, barely a blow,
more like a falling, an exquisite giving
of yourself to the ground, made numb
by those eyes. It may be easier just to watch,
for fighting will only prolong things,
and you will have no time to notice the sky,
the texture of dust, what incredible leaves
the trees have. Instead, focus on your life,
its crimson liquor he grows drunk on.
Notice the way the red highlights his face,
how the snub nose is softened, the lips made
fuller; notice his deft musculature, his rapture,
because in all of creation there is not art
to compare with such elegance, such simplicity.
Notice this and remember it,
this way in which you became beautiful
when you thought there was nothing more.
~Michael Johnson, “How to be Eaten by a Lion”
When the ocean comes to you as a lover,
marry, at once, quickly,
for God’s sake!
Don’t postpone it!
Existence has no better gift.
No amount of searching
will find this.
A perfect falcon, for no reason,
has landed on your shoulder,
and become yours.
~Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)
The captive raised her hand and pressed it to her brow;
“I have been struck,” she said, “and I am suffering now;
Yet these are little worth, your bolts and irons strong,
And, were they forged in steel, they could not hold me long.”
Hoarse laughed the jailer grim: “Shall I be won to hear;
Dost think, fond, dreaming wretch, that I shall grant thy prayer?
Or, better still, wilt melt my master’s heart with groans?
Ah! sooner might the sun thaw down these granite stones.
“My master’s voice is low, his aspect bland and kind,
But hard as hardest flint, the soul that lurks behind;
And I am rough and rude, yet not more rough to see
Than is the hidden ghost that has its home in me.”
~Emily Bronte, from “The Prisoner (a fragment)”
Lonelier now, dependent on one another
utterly, though not knowing one another at all,
we no longer lay out each path as a lovely meander,
but straight ahead…
~Rainer Maria Rilke, from Sonnet XXIV (Sonnets to Orpheus, Part I)
(translated by Stephen Mitchell)
From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,
I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood;
Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curved neck and side-falling head;
His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody stump
And has not yet looked on it…
~Walt Whitman, from “Drum-Taps”
I go on in the dark, lit from within; does day exist?
Is this my grave, or the womb of my mother?
Something beats against my skin like a cold
stone that starts to grow warm, scarlet, tender.
Maybe I’m still waiting to be born,
or maybe I’ve been dead all the time. Darkness rules me.
If life is this, I wonder what death would be…
~Miguel Hernandez, from “I go on in the dark”
(translated by Timothy Baland)
Tired companion, I see you in my heart.
I read your eyes, sad friend.
In your breast you carry cold, hunger, nothing.
You have broken what’s left of the courage within you.
~Primo Levi, from “Buna”
(translated by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann)
My friend, be not like him who sits by his fireside and watches the fire go out, then blows vainly upon the dead ashes. Do not give up hope or yield to despair because of that which is past, for to bewail the irretrievable is the worst of human frailties.
~Kahlil Gibran, from “The Voice of the Master”
(translated by Anthony R. Ferris)
Today I realize
that my spirit has rusted
to a degree
I shall not be able
to shine it again.
***
If the past is spread behind me
and the future is spread before me,
in this there is the comfort
of my current struggle.
~Mahmud Shurayh, from “How can I escape this busy life”
(translated by Aziz Shihab)
Nothing in this world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,
nothing can surpass it.
The soft overcomes the hard;
the gentle overcomes the rigid.
Everyone knows this is true,
but few can put it into practice.
~Lao-tzu, from “Tao Te Ching” Chapter 78
(translated by Stephen Mitchell)
If you are still here with me, if in this darkness
there is still some place where your spirit resonates
on the shallow soundwaves stirred up by my voice:
hear me; help me. We can so easily
slip back from what we have struggled to attain,
abruptly, into a life we never wanted;
can find that we are trapped, as in a dream,
and die there, without ever waking up.
This can occur. Anyone who has lifted
his blood into a years-long work may find
that he can’t sustain it, the force of gravity
is irresistible, and it falls back, worthless.
For somewhere there is an ancient enmity
between our daily life and the great work.
Help me, in saying it, to understand it.
~Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Requiem for a Friend”
(translated by Stephen Mitchell)
…there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.
~Milan Kundera, from The Unbearable Lightness of Being
(translated by Michael Henry Heim)
In you I waver, fall
and rise up burning.
You among all beings
have the right
to see me weak…
~Pablo Neruda, from “The Hurt”
(translated by Donald D. Walsh)
Tell me, O people, tell me!
Who among you would not wake from the sleep of life
if love were to brush your spirit with its fingertips?
~Kahlil Gibran, from “At the Gate of the Temple”
(translated by John Walbridge)
The face of all the world is changed, I think,
Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul
Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole
Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink
Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink,
Was caught up into love, and taught the whole
Of life in a new rhythm…
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning, from Sonnet VII (from the Portuguese)
How clear she shines! How quietly
I lie beneath her guardian light;
While heaven and earth are whispering me,
‘Tomorrow, wake, but, dream to-night’…
~Emily Bronte, from “How Clear She Shines”
When you long for blessings that you may not name, and when you grieve knowing not the cause, then indeed you are growing with all things that grow, and rising toward your greater self.
~Kahlil Gibran, from “Sand and Foam”
Your love
Should never be offered to the mouth of a
Stranger,
Only to someone
Who has the valor and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife
Then weave them into a blanket
To protect you.
~Hafiz, from "Some Fill With Each Good Rain"
(interpreted by Daniel Landinsky)
Friend, our closeness is this:
anywhere you put your foot, feel me
in the firmness under you.
~Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)
One soul is aflame with a godlike passion,
One plays with love in an idler’s fashion,
One speaks and the other hears.
One sobs, ‘I love you,’ and wet eyes show it,
And one laughs lightly, and says, ‘I know it,’
With smiles for the other’s tears.
One lives for the other and nothing beside,
And the other remembers the world is wide.
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from “The Way of It”
In former days we’d both agree
That you were me, and I was you.
What has now happened to us two,
That you are you, and I am me?
~Bhartrhari
(translated by John Brough)
I told my heart, “I can’t endure this tyranny!
He’s nothing, no one! What’s this bully’s love to me?”
My little heart, you’re like a boundless sea, it seems;
And common sense? A splinter somewhere on that sea.
~Jahan Malek Khatun
(translated by Dick Davis)
Deceive the foolish world-deceive it on,
And veil your passions in your pride;
But now I’ve found your feebles by my own,
From me the needful fraud you cannot hide…
~Aphra Behn, from “On Desire. A Pindaric”
I do not love thee!-no! I do not love thee!
And yet when thou art absent I am sad;
And envy even the bright blue sky above thee,
Whose quiet stars may see thee and be glad.
I do not love thee!-yet, I know not why,
Whate’er thou dost seems still well done, to me:
And often in my solitude I sigh
That those I do love are not more like thee!
I do not love thee!-yet, when thou art gone,
I hate the sound (though those who speak be dear)
Which breaks the lingering echo of the tone
Thy voice of music leaves upon my ear.
I do not love thee!-yet thy speaking eyes,
With their deep, bright, and most expressive blue,
Between me and the midnight heaven arise,
Oftener than any eyes I ever knew.
I know I do not love thee! yet, alas!
Others will scarcely trust my candid heart;
And oft I catch them smiling as they pass,
Because they see me gazing where thou art.
~Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton
…Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are-
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from “Ulysses”
…And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A Traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.
~William Wordsworth, from “She was a Phantom of delight”
You cannot look in his eyes
Because your pulse must not say
What must not be said.
~Gwendolyn Brooks, from “To Be in Love”
I am the one without hope, the word without echoes,
he who lost everything and he who had everything.
Last hawser, in you creaks my last longing.
In my barren land you are the final rose.
~Pablo Neruda, from Love Poem VIII
(translated by Cristina Garcia)
Only-but this is rare-
When a belovèd hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,
Our eyes can in another’s eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen’d ear
Is by the tones of a loved voice caress’d-
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.
A man becomes aware of his life’s flow,
And hears its winding murmur; and he sees
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.
~Matthew Arnold, from “The Buried Life”
Where waters smoothest run, there deepest are the fords,
The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move;
The firmest faith is found in fewest words,
The turtles do not sing, and yet they love;
True hearts have ears and eyes, no tongues to speak;
They hear and see, and sigh, and then they break.
~Sir Edward Dyer, from “A Silent Love”
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forebore, . .
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes, the tears of two.
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet VI (from the Portuguese)
With all my will, but much against my heart,
We two now part.
My Very Dear,
Our solace is, the sad road lies so clear.
It needs no art,
With faint, averted feet
And many a tear,
In our opposed paths to persevere.
Go thou to East, I West.
We will not say
There’s any hope, it is so far away.
But, O, my Best….
~Coventry Patmore, from “A Farewell”