She is not beautiful

Sometimes you might love someone who frowns more than smiles...... For the youngsters out there, "fair" in this poem refers to beauty. "She is not fair to outward view" = she's not beautiful in appearance.

She is not fair to outward view

SHE is not fair to outward view,

As many maidens be,

Her loveliness I never knew

Until she smiled on me:

O, then I saw her eye was bright, --

A well of love, a spring of light.

But now her looks are coy and cold;

To mine they never reply;

And yet I cease not to behold,

The love-light in her eye:

Her very frowns are better far

Than smiles of other maidens are!




Hartley Coleridge

Waking up Midlife

A Daughter of Eve

A FOOL I was to sleep at noon,

And wake when night is chilly

Beneath the comfortless cold moon;

A fool to pluck my rose too soon,

A fool to snap my lily.

My garden-plot I have not kept;

Faded and all-forsaken,

I weep as I have never wept:

Oh it was summer when I slept,

It's winter now I waken.

Talk what you please of future spring

And sun-warm'd sweet to-morrow:

Stripp'd bare of hope and everything,

No more to laugh, no more to sing,

I sit alone with sorrow.

Christina Rossetti

When Daffodils Bloom

When my Daffodils Bloom

When my daffodils bloom
I remember my childhood
--carrying a cut blossom
wrapped in wet tissue and
a plastic baggy
for my teacher.
--posing for a picture in my mother's
daffodil bed
I remember the day after my dad died.
--two pots of daffodils
bought to comfort a
wounded spirit.

Every year since, a bittersweet reminder of days
that will never come again.
Each year the bitter eases
the sweet increases.

Each year I still
---carry a cut blossom to school
wrapped in a wet tissue and
a plastic baggy
for my students.

When my Daffodils bloom
I take time to remember
explaining to my students
that a daffodil is more than a flower
----it is a survivor
of a cold bitter winter
---it is the hope of a thawing
of our world, our emotions, our lives.

When my Daffodils bloom
I remember Spring.
and all is right in my world.

When my daffodils bloom
I can dream of tomorrow. ©jkb 2007

Alchemy

Alchemy

I LIFT my heart as spring lifts up
A yellow daisy to the rain;
My heart will be a lovely cup
Altho' it holds but pain.

For I shall learn from flower and leaf
That color every drop they hold,
To change the lifeless wine of grief
To living gold.

Sara Teasdale