A Selection of Love Poems & Passages

From "Invitation to Love," by Paul Laurence Dunbar:

Come when my heart is full of grief,
Or when my heart is merry;
Come with the falling of the leaf
Or with the redd'ning cherry


From "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven," in The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats:

But I, being poor have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.


From The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran:

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.


From "Somewhere I Have Never Traveled," by E. E. Cummings:

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose


From "Sonnet 116," in Love Poems and Sonnets of William Shakespeare:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments.
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken


From "How Do I Love Thee?", by 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


From Beloved, by Toni Morrison:

Paul D sits down in the rocking chair and examines the quilt patched in carnival colors. His hands are limp between his knees. There are too many things to feel about this woman. His head hurts. Suddenly he remembers Sixo trying to describe what he felt about the Thirty-Mile Woman. "She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind."


From "A Poem of Friendship" in Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day by Nikki Giovanni:

I don't want to be near you
for the thoughts we share
but the words we never haveto speak.


From "The Book of Ruth," 1: 16-17 in The Bible

For whither thou goest, I will go;
And where thou lodgest, I will lodge;
Thy people shall be my people;
And thy God my God.

The Paradox of Our Time

The paradox of our time in history is that...

We have taller buildings, but shorter tempers.
Wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints.
We spend more, but have less.
We buy more, but enjoy it less.

We have bigger houses and smaller families.
More conveniences, but less time.
We have more degrees, but less sense.
More knowledge, but less judgment.
More experts, but more problems.
More medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly,
laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry too quickly,
stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little,
watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.
We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.
We've learned how to make a living, but not a life;
We've added years to life, not life to years.

We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor.
We've conquered outer space, but not inner space;
We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.
We've split the atom, but not our prejudice.
We write more, but learn less;
We plan more, but accomplish less;
We've learned to rush, but not to wait;
We have higher incomes, but lower morals;
We have more food, but less appeasement;

We build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication.

We've become long on quantity, but short on quality.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships.

These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure,but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition.

These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes.

These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill.

It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom; a time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to make a difference, or to just hit delete...


-- Dr. Bob Moorehead