Passion

One Hour To Madness And Joy

One hour to madness and joy!
O furious! O confine me not!
(What is this that frees me so in storms?
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)

O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!
O savage and tender achings!
(I bequeath them to you, my children,
I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)

O to be yielded to you, whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me, in defiance of the world!
O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine!
O to draw you to me—to plant on you for the first time the lips of a determin’d man!

O the puzzle—the thrice-tied knot—the deep and dark pool! O all untied and illumin’d!
O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!
O to be absolv’d from previous ties and conventions—I from mine, and you from yours!
O to find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of nature!
O to have the gag remov’d from one’s mouth!
O to have the feeling, to-day or any day, I am sufficient as I am!

O something unprov’d! something in a trance!
O madness amorous! O trembling!
O to escape utterly from others’ anchors and holds!
To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!
To court destruction with taunts—with invitations!
To ascend—to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!
To rise thither with my inebriate Soul!
To be lost, if it must be so!
To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom!
With one brief hour of madness and joy.

Walt Whitman, 1860

I am not so sure one can feed the remainder of life with just one brief hour of madness and joy. I think it much more likely that, having climbed those heights once, one's instinct is to want to climb them again and again. And if those heights are forbidden besides, well, so much more the pull to them. I imagine it would be easy to fall into a trap that way, always looking for that same thrill and never finding it. And in the constant search, I also imagine it would be easy to overlook a different kind of joy. Maybe less madness to it, but that doesn't mean it can't be just as fulfilling. There is much to be said for the slowly accumulating joy of tiny little moments of everyday kindnesses and shared laughter and comforts of familiarity.

The truth is that, as we move through life and find each other, we gather more and more ties and lose more and more freedom. Sometimes it happens slowly, almost imperceptibly, other times we choose the ties deliberately and publicly. And while there is intoxication in the thought of breaking free from all those ties at times, I imagine regret would follow such an action. And surely that regret would, in time, overshadow the joy of the moment.

All that aside, reading this poem, don't you just want to jump off that cliff anyway?

An Irish Poet for an Irish Day

When You Are Old

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

William Butler Yeats, 1893

I think of this poem as a sort of last-ditch effort of the poet to win the heart of his love. If it had been written to me, it probably would have worked. Who would not prefer to be loved for one's soul, whether young or old, than one's beauty?

Reality

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hair be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

William Shakespeare 1609


This is my favorite of Shakespeare's sonnets. It is, to me, so much more romantic, more swoon-worthy, than Shall I compare thee to a summer day, which many people would probably identify as the Bard's most romantic sonnet. To be seen by a clear eye, to have one's imperfections acknowledged, and to be found fair, to be loved anyway, that would be something worth having. To be seen with the heart as well as the eye, and to have the heart triumph over the eye in the end, that is what I wish for.

Shift

one recent evening
i glanced sidelong at you
and there occurred the slightest shift.
your neck,
inconsequential a moment before,
had become a sensual target.
your words blended together,
familiar in tone but
suddenly indecipherable.
isn't that something,
i thought to myself.

Kirsten Larsen 2008

When I told my friend of over twenty years--my best friend forever in the common parlance--that I had started this blog, I received the most wonderful gift: this untitled poem, which she had written for a friend of hers. I knew she was an excellent writer; twenty years of correspondence had given ample evidence of this, but never before have I heard her even hint at writing poetry. We are a friendship of opposites: coffee versus tea, Bitch magazine versus romance novels, film festivals versus knitting. But we know each other well, we trust each other and we love each other. We have a shared history of laughter and tears and frustration and triumph. Even given all that, I do not feel I am biased in thinking her poem excellent. If you, too, think it excellent, please speak up.

Breaking Up The Classy Way

Sonnet 63

Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part;
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart
That thus so cleanly I myself can free;
Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,
When faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou mightst him yet recover.

Michael Drayton 1619

I first came across this poem in my teen years, in a cheap paperback romance novel. In the story, the hero and heroine fall in love over poetry, some sort of misunderstanding blocks their path to happiness, and they part. In one last noble gesture, our hero quotes the first line of this poem, our heroine goes to the library and reads the poem, and all is well, she is assured of his love and returns to him, and all live happily ever after.

The poem has stood me well in the years since, for who can so cleanly cut herself free? We declare it is over, convince ourselves we shall not think of our former beloved again, but weeks, months, years later, even, a chance thought, or a glimpse of a familiar face, and it all comes rushing back, in a brief burst of madness. And if, at that moment, we received proof of love returned, would we not be tempted to fall again? All the work the mind has done to declare separation can be undone by the heart in a moment.

But that sort of story seems to work best in novels, not real life. Because in real life, we do not receive proof of love returned. We meet in the grocery store or some such place, and polite conversation ensues. We are introduced to the new love, or shown pictures of young children, and our paths part again. Only in novels, it seems, does the impossible happen. For an excellent example, I recommend Jane Austen's Persuasion. It's good to escape reality now and again.

Dangerous To Know

She Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

George Gordon, Lord Byron 1815

Byron wrote this when he was 27 years old, devastatingly handsome, and undeniably scandalous. He was famous for his affairs and eventually had to flee polite society. One of his discarded lovers called him "mad, bad and dangerous to know." Well, if he was going to write stuff like this, one can certainly see why women threw themselves at him like moths to a flame.

It works.