Photo illustration by Vic Burkhammer

Here’s a handful of poems for Valentine’s Day.

Sidney Lanier is in some sense a West Virginia poet….his melodic verse, his extravagant conceits! His father a lawyer, his mother of Scotch descent with a love of music, of poetry…. Lanier was not just a poet but a musician, once took part in a concert in Wheeling, W.Va., and also taught in West Virginia for three years, it’s said, before moving on to North Carolina.

Here’s a Danske Dandridge poem, addressed to Lanier.

Sidney Lanier

Dear brother, thou who grandly didst aspire
  To Holy Beauty, yet didst meek obey
The voice from heaven that called thee, “Come up higher”;
  Thou who our listening hearts didst greatly away
With magic of thy flute-toned artful lay
When, like thy Master, thou wast “clean fore-spent,”
Laid’st calmly down thy clear-voiced instrument.
How grandly now thy spirit, with no clod
  Of frail and feeble flesh to hold her back,
Will follow through eternity thy God
  In His vast, glorious and harmonious track!

_____________________________

And here’s a poem by Lanier:

Wedding Hymn

By Sidney Lanier

Thou God, whose high, eternal Love
Is the only blue sky of our life,
Clear all the Heaven that bends above
The life-road of this man and wife.
May these two lives be but one note
In the world’s strange-sounding harmony,
Whose sacred music e’er shall float
Through every discord up to Thee.
As when from separate stars two beams
Unite to form one tender ray:
As when two sweet but shadowy dreams
Explain each other in the day:
So may these two dear hearts one light
Emit, and each interpret each.
Let an angel come and dwell tonight
In this dear double-heart, and teach.

_____________________________

Poet extraordinaire Ben Jonson, of course, never lived in the Mountain State, but here’s another poem for the road on Valentine’s Day.

Song: To Celia

By Ben Jonson

Come, my Celia, let us prove,
While we can, the sports of love;
Time will not be ours forever;
He at length our good will sever.
Spend not then his gifts in vain.
Suns that set may rise again;
But if once we lose this light,
’Tis with us perpetual night.
Why should we defer our joys?
Fame and rumor are but toys.
Cannot we delude the eyes
Of a few poor household spies,
Or his easier ears beguile,
So removèd by our wile?
’Tis no sin love’s fruit to steal;
But the sweet thefts to reveal,
To be taken, to be seen,
These have crimes accounted been.

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Recently, it seems I hear more and more people say they love the poems of Rumi, who lived in the 13th-century and is considered by some to be world literature’s greatest mystical poet. The other day, offhand, unprompted, Kate Long said, “I really like the poems of Rumi.” Kate is a longtime reporter/songwriter/Gazette writing coach.

Looking around for poems about love, I immediately thought of Rumi. Several days ago, just before Kate’s comment about Rumi, I watched a YouTube presentation of a Rumi poem that I find touching. I had read Rumi’s poems now and then over the years, but this little YouTube show from Children of Light Productions takes its time and is very effective… the words, the pictures and the music blending.

Click the video to watch a clip of “become the sky.”

Here’s another Rumi poem, apt for the holiday.

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,
absentminded. Someone sober
will worry about things going badly.
Let the lover be.

– JALALUD’DIN RUMI
Trans. by Coleman Barks

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A thousand joys!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.