True Love Poetry Is Rare

....Visit WIX.COM at http://www.wix.com/Judyth_Baker/Love-Poetry to view love poems there (an ongoing project)........... Why are there so few true Love poems? Love is the most important thing that can ever grace a life.........
Consider how few are the great lovers known in western literature:....
Troilus and Cressida, Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde (she says, in the 2007 film, "I want to know that there's more to this life, and I can't know that if they kill you." [she Kisses Tristan] ---oh, how I know how that feels! Then there's Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who eloped with Robert Browning, to have a happy life in exile, and even bore her lover a strong son, that former bed-ridden poetess! And she wrote, in the midst of her joy, in her collection of poems, this ageless love paeon:....

XLIII. "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..."by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
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Then there's Heloise and Abelard, whose love was not truly consummated....the Greeks knew true love could last forever....
in their great legend of Philemon and Baucis, who wished to die together, the gods made sure they were were simultaneously transformed into linden trees, overlooking the lake where their evil townsfolk were immersed and turned into fish for their inhospitable actions....

And then there was our love. As endless and lovely, to the end of time, as all the legends were, as all the real-life true lovers' stories were...so was it between Lee and me....and it always will.......




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"Leaves of Love" (1st p, above) composed 1980 by
Judyth Vary Baker, arrangement by Elaine MacLean
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I'll be posting poems here, too.
Judyth Vary Baker

Creating Beauty

CREATING and BEAUTY go well together. I was astonished to surf the Internet, seeking others who are interested in creating beauty in this world, because I discovered that most websites were concerned about plastic surgery or selling garden seeds, when discussing creating beauty. there was little about making the effort to create beauty for the world from ther inner self. Emily Dickinson wrote:

(I Died For Beauty)

I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth - the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a-night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.
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What's significant in this poem is how Dickinson links beauty and truth. "We brethren are" she wrote, for death claimed each soul over the issues of beauty and truth-- worth dying for. They talked together until the moss covered their names on the tombs, but did that mean the world forgot what they had died for? As long as beauty is cherished, as long as truth is honored-- one's death, to achieve the goal of creating beauty, of disseminating truth -- is not in vain.

In our barbaric society, glints of beauty and truth still illuminate the seeking souls of humankind. Though it may be difficult to find 'creating beauty' on the Internet, I would ask you to seek within yourself the most beautiful moments you can remember in your life. Write them down. Perhaps it was a lover's kiss. A flower, blooming in the snow. A dog, looking up with sweetness into your eyes. A fragrance. A drop of golden color in the center of a pool of blue.

You can create beauty within yourself by avoiding evil and thinking on the beautiful/ then, reflecting it, through your talents, your speech, your actions. What is evil? That which destroys beauty and truth. How can truth and beauty be saved from evil? By creating beauty, and fighting for the truth. Creating beauty within will allow you to express yourself with beauty to the world. Fighting for truth will give you incredible power to do good in the world.

Beauty is more than plastic surgery and planting garden seeds--though these can indeed create ephemeral beauty. Beauty of character comes by embracing the truth and eschewing evil. In a world where ethics and morals are supposed to be a play of mere shades of gray, being a champion for beauty and truth can scatter a kaleidoscope of color in rainbows that arch across the universe of your soul--and that beauty will be with you, to share with others, until the moss grows over your name.



Judyth Vary Bker