Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?

Roy Lichtenstein

Forget It! Forget Me!

Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?

Why so pale and wan, fond lover?

Prithee, why so pale?

Will, when looking well can't move her,

Looking ill prevail?

Prithee, why so pale?
Why so dull and mute, young sinner?

Prithee, why so mute?

Will, when speaking well can't win her,

Saying nothing do't?

Prithee, why so mute?
Quit, quit for shame! This will not move;

This cannot take her.

If of herself she will not love,

Nothing can make her:

The devil take her!

~ Sir John Suckling ~

I've nothing else -- to bring, You know

Edvard Munch

Ashes

I've nothing else -- to bring, You know

I've nothing else -- to bring, You know --

So I keep bringing These --

Just as the Night keeps fetching Stars

To our familiar eyes --

Maybe, we shouldn't mind them --

Unless they didn't come --

Then -- maybe, it would puzzle us

To find our way Home –

~ Emily Dickinson ~

Prayer For A Very New Angel

Edward Munch

Death In The Sickroom

Prayer For A Very New Angel

God,God, be lenient her first night there.

The crib she slept in was so near my bed;

Her blue-and-white wool blanket was so soft,

Her pillow hollowed so to fit her head.

Teach me that she'll not want small rooms or me

When she has You and Heaven's immensity.

I always left a light out in the hall.

I hoped to make her fearless in the dark;

And yet, she was so small-one little light,

Not in the room, it scarcely mattered. Hark!

No,no; she seldom cried! God, not to far

For her to see, this first night,light a star!

And in the morning, when she first woke up,

I always kissed her on her left cheek where

the dimple was. And oh, I wet the brush,

it made it easier to curl her hair.

Just, just tomorrow morning, God, I pray,

When she wakes up, do things for her my way.

~ Violet Alleyn Storey ~

Waiting for Icarus

Hobson Pittman

The Spinster

Waiting for Icarus

He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together

He said that everything would be better than before

He said we were on the edge of a new relation

He said he would never again cringe before his father

He said that he was going to invent full-time

He said he loved me that going into me

He said was going into the world and the sky

He said all the buckles were very firm

He said the wax was the best wax

He said Wait for me here on the beach

He said Just don't cry

I remember the gulls and the waves

I remember the islands going dark on the sea

I remember the girls laughing

I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me

I remember mother saying: Inventors are like poets, a trashy lot

I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse

I remember she added: Women who love such are the worst of all

I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer.

I would have liked to try those wings myself.

It would have been better than this.

~ Muriel Rukeyser ~

A Dream Within A Dream

René Magritte

Le Beau Monde

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow--You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand--

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep--while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

~ Edgar Allan Poe ~