"My Heart is Lame" by Charlotte Mew

My heart is lame with running after yours so fast

Such a long way,

Shall we walk slowly home, looking at all the things we passed

Perhaps to-day?

Home down the quiet evening roads under the quiet skies,

Not saying much,

You for a moment giving me your eyes

When you could bear my touch.

But not to-morrow. This has taken all my breath;

Then, though you look the same,

There may be something lovelier in Love's face in death

As your heart sees it, running back the way we came;

My heart is lame.

"Autumn Sonnet" by May Sarton

If I can let you go as trees let go

Their leaves, so casually, one by one,

If I can come to know what they do know,

That fall is the release, the consummation,

Then fear of time and the uncertain fruit

Would not distemper the great lucid skies

This strangest autumn, mellow and acute.

If I can take the dark with open eyes

And call it seasonal, not harsh or strange

(For love itself may need a time of sleep),

And, treelike, stand unmoved before the change,

Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,

The strong root still alive under the snow,

Love will endure -- if I can let you go.

A Quote by Adrienne Rich

"Every poem breaks a silence that had to be overcome."

"Constancy" by Elsa Gidlow

You're jealous if I kiss this girl and that,

You think I should be constant to one mouth?

Little you know of my too quenchless drouth:

My sister, I keep faith with love, not lovers.

Life laid a flaming finger on my heart,

Gave me an electric golden thread,

Pointed to a pile of beads and said:

Link me one more glorious than the rest.

Love's the thread, my sister, you a bead,

An ivory one, you are so delicate.

Those first burned ash-grey--far too passionate.

Further on the colors mount and sing.

When the last bead's painted with the last design

And slipped upon the thread, I'll tie it: so;

Then smiling quietly I'll turn and go

While vain Life boasts her latest ornament.

Aphra Behn: "To the Fair Clarinda"

Who made love to me,
Imagin'd more than woman.

Fair lovely Maid, or if that Title be
Too weak, too Feminine for Nobler thee,
Permit a Name that more Approaches Truth:
And let me call thee, Lovely Charming Youth.
This last will justifie my soft complaint,
While that may serve to lessen my constraint;
And without Blushes I the Youth persue,
When so much beauteous Woman is in view.
Against thy Charms we struggle but in vain
With thy deluding Form thou giv'st us pain,
While the bright Nymph betrays us to the Swain.
In pity to our Sex sure thou wer't sent,
That we might Love, and yet be Innocent:
For sure no Crime with thee we can commit;
Or if we shou'd - thy Form excuses it.
For who, that gathers fairest Flowers believes
A Snake lies hid beneath the Fragrant Leaves.

Though beauteous Wonder of a different kind,
Soft Cloris with the dear Alexis join'd;
When e'er the Manly part of thee, wou'd plead
Though tempts us with the Image of the Maid,
While we the noblest Passions do extend
The Love to Hermes, Aphrodite the Friend.

"Song to a Lady" by Anne Sexton

On the day of breasts and small hips

the window pocked with bad rain,

rain coming on like a minister,

we coupled, so sane and insane.

We lay like spoons while the sinister

rain dropped like flies on our lips

and our glad eyes and our small hips.

“The room is so cold with rain,” you said

and you, feminine you, with your flower

said novenas to my ankles and elbows.

You are a national product and power.

Oh my swan, my drudge, my dear wooly rose,

even notary would notarize our bed

as you knead me and I rise like bread.

"Flesh of the things" by Renée Vivien

I have, in my subtle fingers, the direction of the world,

Because the touch penetrates like makes the voice,

The harmony and the dream and the major pain

Quiver lengthily on the end of my fingers.

I include/understand better, by passing very close to them, the beautiful things,

I share their intense life in concerning,

At this point in time I know what they have in them

Of noble, the very soft one and of similar with the song.

Because my fingers knew the flesh of the potteries

The flesh smoothes marble with female contours

That the hand which can model them has ravaged,

And that of the pearl and that of velvet.

They knew the intimate life of the furs,

Hot and superb fleece where I plunge the hands!

They knew the burning secrecy of chevelures

Where thousands of jasmines were thinned out the leaves of.

And, similar to these which come from the voyages.

My fingers traversed infinite horizons,

They lit, better than my eyes, of the faces

And prophesied me obscure treasons.

They knew the subtle skin of the woman,

And its cruel shivers and its underhand perfumes…

Flesh of the things! I believed étreindre sometimes a heart

With the prolonged rubbing of my fingers…