Sonnet 14 - If thou must love me, let it be for nought
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
'I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'—
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

God's Wheel... more reasons he's a better driver

God's Wheel
by Shel Silverstein

GOD says to me with a kind
of smile, "Hey how would you like
to be God awhile And steer the world?"
"Okay," says I, "I'll give it a try.

Where do I set?
How much do I get?
What time is lunch?
When can I quit?"

"Gimme back that wheel," says GOD.
"I don't think you're quite ready YET."

finding things in unusual places...

A great song, one of Michael Jackson's best, but also a surprisingly powerful and sad picture of our temptations... reminds me why we need salvation by faith alone...


Dirty Diana

Oh No . . .
Oh No . . .
Oh No . . .

You'll Never Make Me Stay
So Take Your Weight Off Of Me
I Know Your Every Move
So Won't You Just Let Me Be
I've Been Here Times Before
But I Was Too Blind To See
That You Seduce Every Man
This Time You Won't Seduce Me

She's Saying That's Ok
Hey Baby Do What You Please
I Have The Stuff That You Want
I Am The Thing That You Need
She Looked Me Deep In The Eyes
She's Touchin' Me So To Start
She Says There's No Turnin' Back
She Trapped Me In Her Heart

Dirty Diana, Nah
Dirty Diana, Nah
Dirty Diana, No
Dirty Diana
Let Me Be!

Oh No . . .
Oh No . . .
Oh No . . .

She Likes The Boys In The
Band
She Knows When They Come To Town
Every Musician's Fan After
The Curtain Comes Down
She Waits At Backstage
Doors
For Those Who Have Prestige
Who Promise
Fortune And Fame, A Life
That's So Carefree
She's Saying That's Ok
Hey Baby Do What You Want
I'll Be Your Night Lovin' Thing
I'll Be The Freak You Can Taunt
And I Don't Care What You
Say
I Want To Go Too Far
I'll Be Your Everything
If You Make Me A Star

Dirty Diana, Nah
Dirty Diana, Nah
Dirty Diana, No
Dirty Diana . . .
Dirty Diana, Nah
Dirty Diana, Nah
Dirty Diana, No
Dirty Diana . . .
Diana!
Diana!
Dirty Diana!
It's Dia . . .Aa . . .Aa . . .
Come On!

She Said I Have To Go Home
'Cause I'm Real Tired You See
But I Hate Sleepin' Alone
Why Don't You Come With
Me
I Said My Baby's At Home
She's Probably Worried
Tonight
I Didn't Call On The Phone To
Say That I'm Alright

Diana Walked Up To Me,
She Said I'm All Yours
Tonight
At That I Ran To The Phone
Sayin' Baby I'm Alright
I Said But Unlock The Door,
Because I Forgot The Key,
She Said He's Not Coming
Back
Because He's Sleeping With
Me

Dirty Diana, Nah
Dirty Diana, Nah
Dirty Diana, Nah
Dirty Diana, No
Dirty Diana, Nah
Dirty Diana, Nah
Dirty Diana, Nah
Dirty Diana . . .
Come On!
Come On!
Come On!
Come On!...

The most amazing truth...

"God, being great in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved, through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." Ephesians 2:4-10

And some wonderful psalms...

The Lord has the best verses...


Psalm 130

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.

O Israel, hope in the Lord!
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
and with him is plentiful redemption.
And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

-------

Psalm 131

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
My eyes are not raised too high,
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvellous for me.
But I have calmed and quietened my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time forth and for evermore.

Some verses that make me wonder...

First of the Last Chances

I stand back as the Skipton train advances,
having to choose too fast

between the scorn and sympathetic glances
of my supporting cast

all of whom think boarding this train enhances
my odds. I wave it past

If I don't take the first of the last chances
I will not fear the last


By Sophie Hannah


----------

Early in the Morning

While the long grain is softening
in the water, gurgling
over a low stove flame, before
the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced
for breakfast, before the birds,
my mother glides an ivory comb
through her hair, heavy
and black as calligrapher's ink.

She sits at the foot of the bed.
My father watches, listens for
the music of comb
against hair.

My mother combs,
pulls her hair back
tight, rolls it
around two fingers, pins it
in a bun to the back of her head.
For half a hundred years she has done this.
My father likes to see it like this.
He says it is kempt.

But I know
it is because of the way
my mother's hair falls
when he pulls the pins out.
Easily, like the curtains
when they untie them in the evening.


By Li-Young Lee



------

Chasing shadows

My love was made of glass;
But I am blackened coal:
Stained and hardened by time,
Opaque against her translucence

She found my shadow,
Staring, shivering.
The sun sought her out;
She gently refracted and gave me light;

Slowly she took my darkness, and I her light;
Now I hold her in my bloodied hands:
Shattered pieces that bring life,
Jagged edges that leave me scarred.

I bleed still, from old wounds she bound;
Tiptoe on bridges over salt tear seas of fears
Is it enough to love ‘we’
When it’s too much to love me?


By J R Keane

--------

Tie your heart at night to mine, love

Tie your heart at night to mine, love,
and both will defeat the darkness
like twin drums beating in the forest
against the heavy wall of wet leaves.

Night crossing: black coal of dream
that cuts the thread of earthly orbs
with the punctuality of a headlong train
that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.

Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement,
to the grip on life that beats in your breast,
with the wings of a submerged swan,

So that our dream might reply
to the sky’s questioning stars
with one key, one door closed to shadow.


By Pablo Neruda

Two sonnets by Pablo Neruda...

Not only a beautiful romantic poem, but it also reminds me of when we first discover God's love and realise how it makes all things new...

Sonnet XXV

Before I loved you, love, nothing was my own:
I wavered through the streets, among
Objects:
Nothing mattered or had a name:
The world was made of air, which waited.

I knew rooms full of ashes,
Tunnels where the moon lived,
Rough warehouses that growled 'get lost',
Questions that insisted in the sand.

Everything was empty, dead, mute,
Fallen abandoned, and decayed:
Inconceivably alien, it all

Belonged to someone else - to no one:
Till your beauty and your poverty
Filled the autumn plentiful with gifts.


--------
I love the "interruption" here, which seems to make it so much more tender and personal...

Sonnet VIII

If your eyes were not the color of the moon,
of a day full [here, interrupted by the baby waking -- continued about 26
hours later ]
of a day full of clay, and work, and fire,
if even held-in you did not move in agile grace like the air,
if you were not an amber week,

not the yellow moment
when autumn climbs up through the vines;
if you were not that bread the fragrant moon
kneads, sprinkling its flour across the sky,

oh, my dearest, I could not love you so!
But when I hold you I hold everything that is --
sand, time, the tree of the rain,

everything is alive so that I can be alive:
without moving I can see it all:
in your life I see everything that lives.

Something and Nothing

If you had known how little
you would have had to give
to drum into this brittle
hope the desire to live

would you have changed the venue,
your greeting or your tone
or planned things better when you
knew we’d have hours alone

and if you heard a hollow
voice spit these ill-advised
questions, would nothing follow?
I wouldn’t be surprised.

-- Sophie Hannah

And sometimes the glass is overflowing with blue skies and sunshine....


Sometimes

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

-- Sheenagh Pugh

Angrily spoke the gardener:
"Who plucked this flower,
the most beautiful in all my garden?"
Gently spoke the Master:
"So dearly did I love it,
I chose it as my own."

I first read this as a child and it probably took me 10 years to really understand it...