Un soir de Mai - A May evening, by Charles Dovalle (1807-1829) excerpt

Lovers in the Grass, Alois Kalvoda (1875-1934)

"...Du jour qui meurt la lumière abaissée
Joue entre les rameaux,
Dore les troncs, et serpente, brisée,
Sur l'herbe, en longs réseaux...

Silence! amants,silence !...
Le vent du soir balance
Le chèvrefeuille en fleur :
Le bois est déjà sombre...
Ne confiez qu'à l'ombre
Vos soupirs de bonheur!..."

"...Of the dying day the falling light

plays between the branches

paints with gold the tree trunks, and crawls, broken

on the grass, in long nets

Silence! Lovers, silence! 

The evening breeze gently plays

with the blossomed honeysuckle

The forest already is dark

Confide only in the shades

your happy sighs!..." 

To Autumn - John Keats

Thomas Moran (1837 – 1926), Cresheim Glen Wissahickon Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Sonnet XXIII, by William Shakespeare

"Venus Verticordia",

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

English

1828 - 1882

As an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put beside his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart;
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love's rite,
And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,
O'ercharged with burthen of mine own love's might.
O! let my looks be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.
   O! learn to read what silent love hath writ:
   To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.

The Holiday -Thoughts of Iris

 "I have found, almost everything ever writen about love, to be true. Shakespeare said "Journeys end in lovers meeting". Oh! What an extraordinary thought! Personaly I have not experienced anything remotely close to that...but i am more than willing to believe Shakespeare had. I suppose i think about love more than anyone realy should. I'm constantly amazed by its shere powere to alter and define our lives. It was Shakespeare who also said "Love is blind". Now that is something I know to be true. For some, quite unexplicably, love fades. For others, love is simply lost. But then of course, love can also be found, even if just for the night. And then there's another kind of love. The cruelest kind, the one that almost kills its victims, its called unrequited love.  Of that, I am an expert! 


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  I understand feeling as small and as insignificant as humanly possible, and how it can actually ache in places that you didn't know you had inside you, and it doesn't matter how many new haircuts you get, or gyms you join, or how many glasses of chardonnay you drink with your girlfriends... you still go to bed every night going over every detail and wonder what you did wrong, or how you could have misunderstood, and how in the hell for that brief moment you could think that you were that happy. And sometimes you can even convince yourself that he'll see the light and show up at your door. And after all that, however long all that may be, you'll go somewhere new, and you'll meet people who make you feel worthwhile again, and little pieces of your soul will finally come back. And all that fuzzy stuff, those years of your life that you wasted, that will eventually begin to fade.~"