Poetry

I met a man who adored Literature.  He studied it too and read ferociously. He used to say the classics are much better reading than modern works. So I look forward to reading Sophocles, Euripides, Homer, Chaucer and more Shakespeare. Under his influence, I just finished Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway.  Next month I've organized a drinks get together and called it Caroline plays Mrs Dalloway (ie party organizer).

This man was meticulous about his reading and committed to its important place in the world. He's found his gift in sharing it with others by tutoring.

We read aloud together and it was probably the most romantic thing I have ever done. I cherish those times.

Suffice to say, I fell for more than the literature and gave my heart too soon.  Unfortunately for many, people you're close to often hear too much of your heartache.  They play the trusting ear to your sad stories.

My landlady is very good fun. She's also wickedly smart. She sometimes sends me poetry that relates to whatever life circumstance I'm going through.

She knows I too love Literature, and she knows - by now - that I have a tendency to wear my heart on my sleeve. This week she sent me this:

Never give all the Heart

By William Butler Yeats

Never give all the heart, for love

Will hardly seem worth thinking of

To passionate women if it seem

Certain, and they never dream

That it fades out from kiss to kiss;

For everything that’s lovely is

But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.

O never give the heart outright,

For they, for all smooth lips can say,

Have given their hearts up to the play.

And who could play it well enough

If deaf and dumb and blind with love?

He that made this knows all the cost,

For he gave all his heart and lost.