Poem Selection

Here are the two poems I have chosen. Both are about love, and yet how different. The firts is serious and reflective, while the other is almost adolescent. Still, they are about love. Aren't they, after all, the same?

Love Is A Mighty Power (Thomas á Kempis)

Love is a mighty power, a great and complete good.

Love alone lightens every burden, and makes rough places smooth.

It bears every hardship as though it were nothing, and renders all bitterness sweet and acceptable.

Nothing is sweeter than love,

Nothing stronger,

Nothing higher,

Nothing wider,

Nothing more pleasant,

Nothing fuller or better in heaven or earth;

for love is born of God.

Love flies, runs and leaps for joy.

It is free and unrestrained.

Love knows no limits, but ardently transcends all bounds.

Love feels no burden, takes no account of toil,

attempts things beyond its strength.

Love sees nothing as impossible,

for it feels able to achieve all things.

It is strange and effective,

while those who lack love faint and fail.

Love is not fickle and sentimental,

nor is it intent on vanities.

Like a living flame and a burning torch,

it surges upward and surely surmounts every obstacle.

Tell Me, My Heart, if This Be Love (George Lyttelton)

WHEN Delia on the plain appears,

Awed by a thousand tender fears

I would approach, but dare not move:

Tell me, my heart, if this be love?

Whene'er she speaks, my ravish'd ear

No other voice than hers can hear,

No other wit but hers approve:

Tell me, my heart, if this be love?

If she some other youth commend,

Though I was once his fondest friend,

His instant enemy I prove:

Tell me, my heart, if this be love?

When she is absent, I no more

Delight in all that pleased before

The clearest spring, or shadiest grove:

Tell me, my heart, if this be love?

When fond of power, of beauty vain,

Her nets she spread for every swain,

I strove to hate, but vainly strove:

Tell me, my heart, if this be love?