A Love Song

My love it should be silent, being deep--
And being very peaceful should be still--
Still as the utmost depths of ocean keep--
Serenely silent as some mighty hill.

Yet is my love so great it needs must fill
With very joy the inmost heart of me,
The joy of dancing branches on the hill,
The joy of leaping waves upon the sea.

Theodosia Garrison

Theodosia Garrison was an American poet known for her lyrical and often melancholic verse. Born on May 26, 1874, her poetry often explored themes of love, loss, and introspection. Throughout her career, Garrison contributed to various literary magazines and became a respected figure in the early 20th-century literary circles. She passed away on August 27, 1944, leaving behind a legacy of poignant and expressive poetry.

Theodosia Garrison

The Gypsying

Theodosia Garrison, Simple Poetry

The Return

Theodosia Garrison, Simple Poetry

The Seer Of Hearts

Theodosia Garrison, Simple Poetry

English

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Song

As the inhastening tide doth roll,
Dear and desired, along the whole
    Wide shining strand, and floods the caves,
    Your love comes filling with happy waves
The open sea-shore of my soul.

But inland from the seaward spaces,
None knows, not even you, the places
    Brimmed, at your coming, out of sight,
    --The little solitudes of delight
This tide constrains in dim embraces.

You see the happy shore, wave-rimmed,
But know not of the quiet dimmed
    Rivers your coming floods and fills,
    The little pools 'mid happier hills,
My silent rivulets, over-brimmed.

What, I have secrets from you?    Yes.
But, visiting Sea, your love doth press
    And reach in further than you know,
    And fills all these; and when you go,
There...

Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell

Three Songs In A Garden I

White rose-leaves in my hands,
I toss you all away;
The winds shall blow you through the world
To seek my wedding day.
Or East you go, or West you go
And fall on land or sea,
Find the one that I love best
And bring him here to me.
And if he finds me spinning
'Tis short I'll break my thread;
And if he finds me dancing
I'll dance with him instead;
If he finds me at the Mass--
(Ah, let this not be,
Lest I forget my sweetest saint
The while he kneels by me!)

Theodosia Garrison

The Speech Of Silence.

        The solemn Sea of Silence lies between us;
    I know thou livest, and them lovest me,
        And yet I wish some white ship would come sailing
    Across the ocean, beating word from thee.

        The dead calm awes me with its awful stillness.
    No anxious doubts or fears disturb my breast;
        I only ask some little wave of language,
    To stir this vast infinitude of rest.

        I am oppressed with this great sense of loving;
    So much I give, so much receive from thee;
        Like subtle incense, rising from a censer,
    So floats the fragrance of thy love round me.

        All speech is poor, and written words unmeaning;
    Yet such I ask, blown hither by some wind,
        To give relief to this too perfect knowledge,

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Sappho III

The twilight's inner flame grows blue and deep,
And in my Lesbos, over leagues of sea,
The temples glimmer moon-wise in the trees.
Twilight has veiled the little flower-face
Here on my heart, but still the night is kind
And leaves her warm sweet weight against my breast.
Am I that Sappho who would run at dusk
Along the surges creeping up the shore
When tides came in to ease the hungry beach,
And running, running till the night was black,
Would fall forespent upon the chilly sand
And quiver with the winds from off the sea?
Ah quietly the shingle waits the tides
Whose waves are stinging kisses, but to me
Love brought no peace, nor darkness any rest.
I crept and touched the foam with fevered hands
And cried to love, from whom the sea is sweet,
From whom the ...

Sara Teasdale

The Broken Lute

Good-bye, my song--I, who found words for sorrow,
Offer my joy to-day a useless lute.
In the deep night I sang me of the morrow;
The sun is on my face and I am mute.

Good-bye, my song, in you was all my yearning,
The prayer for this poor heart I wore so long.
Now love heaps roses where the wounds were burning;
What need have I for song?

Long since I sang of all one loves and misses;
How may I sing to-day who know no wrong?
My lips are all for laughter and for kisses.
Good-bye, my song.

Theodosia Garrison

From The Sea

All beauty calls you to me, and you seem,
Past twice a thousand miles of shifting sea,
To reach me. You are as the wind I breathe
Here on the ships sun-smitten topmost deck,
With only light between the heavens and me.
I feel your spirit and I close my eyes,
Knowing the bright hair blowing in the sun,
The eager whisper and the searching eyes.

Listen, I love you. Do not turn your face
Nor touch me. Only stand and watch awhile
The blue unbroken circle of the sea.
Look far away and let me ease my heart
Of words that beat in it with broken wing.
Look far away, and if I say too much,
Forget that I am speaking. Only watch,
How like a gull that sparkling sinks to rest,
The foam-crest drifts along a happy wave
Toward the bright verge, the boundary of the wo...

Sara Teasdale