More poetry with a theme of love lost. At what cost? Read it and weep,
or sleep on it whether it is a short poem or sonnet. W. B. Yeats is
generally considered to be Ireland’s greatest poet and received the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. Here is a poem Yeats wrote in 1903:
O Do Not Love Too Long
Sweetheart, do not love too long:
I loved long and long,
And grew to be out of fashion
Like an old song,
All through the years of our youth
Neither could have known
Their own thought from the other’s,
We were so much at one.
But O, in a minute she changed —
O do not love too long,
Or you will grow out of fashion
Like an old song.
TRACES of LOVE VIEWED from ABOVE
Imagine if someplace like heaven does exist
inhabitants up there looking down from above
find mirth and joviality in our attempts at love
and notice only foolish folks seriously resist
When viewed from a distance far out in space
how petty our romantic emotions must seem
we wander about in a fool’s paradise and dream
and don’t wake up until we fall flat on our face
Thousands of love songs and poems have been written
books, musicals, plays, recordings overflow libraries
about those who lose and find love, the dreamer tarries
when young loves, new lovers, old lovers get smitten
Fools on a hill, high in the mountains, down in the valleys
lovers rally, rotate, chance, romance, dance, and dally.
QUANTUM LOVE QUANTIFIED QUERIES
How much love is enough, can we ever get enough
measuring an amount of love is difficult to do
lifelong need mixed with other emotional stuff
disappointment depression and just feeling blue
Love parceled out to and from a giver and receiver
is like making limitations to friendship and kindness
it prevents those involved from being a true believer
while love itself often seems blessed by blindness
Sometimes more and sometimes less love is more
love finds its way around us and through us all
life changes to family and friends love will explore
sensible and insensible love will rise and fall
Love from our innermost being grows and thrives
it won’t fall out of fashion or any part of our lives.
Joey “Pepe Batbon” Connolly is a retired educator who taught in the CNMI, NOLA, and LVNV. He is the Poet Laureate of Tinian and enjoys stargazing.
