A Lover’s Garden – Love & Romance Poetry & Quotes

Music:
KEVIN KERN -Pastel Reflections

Why does one love? How queer it is to see only one being in the world, to have only one thought in one’s mind, only one desire in the heart, and only one name on the lips–a name which comes up continually, rising, like the water in a spring, from the depths of the soul to the lips, a name which one repeats over and over again, which one whispers ceaselessly, everywhere, like a prayer.
Guy de Maupassant

Love is always love, come whence it may. A heart that beats at your approach, an eye that weeps when you go away are things so rare, so sweet, so precious that they must never be despised.
Guy de Maupassant,Miss Harriet

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And, oh, how blessed is it thus to meet! To feel that vanished years have not estranged us, distance has not diminished love, that we are to each other even as we parted; to feel again the fond kiss, to hear once more the accents of a voice which to us has been for years so still,–a voice that brings with it the gush of memory! Past days flit before us; feelings, thoughts, hope, we deemed were dead, all rise again, and summoned by that secret witchery, the well-remembered though long silent voice.

Let years, long, lingering, saddening years drag on their chain, let youth have given place to manhood, manhood to age, still will it be the same–the voice we once have loved, and deemed to us forever still–oh, time, and grief, and blighted hope will be forgotten, and youth, in its undimmed and joyous beauty, its glow of generous feelings, its bright anticipations, all, all again be ours.
Grace Aguilar ,The Mother’s Recompense

Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still: if you raved, my arms should confine you, and not a strait waistcoat—your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me: if you flew at me … I should receive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would be restrictive. I should not shrink from you with disgust : in your quiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray of recognition for me.
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Love
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

And in Life’s noisiest hour,
There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
The heart’s Self-solace and soliloquy.
You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within ;
And to the leading Love-throb in the Heart
Thro’ all my Being, thro’ my pulse’s beat ;
You lie in all my many Thoughts, like Light,
Like the fair light of Dawn, or summer Eve
On rippling Stream, or cloud-reflecting Lake.
And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you,
How oft! I bless the Lot that made me love you.

Inspirational poetry of love & the affections of the heart by Rabindranath Tagore:Your Questioning Eyes*For the Union of You and Me*In the dusky path of a dream*Trust Love(Love poems for Valentine’s day)

Music:
Richard Clayderman – Nights In White Satin

Luis Valadares Photography

The Gardener XXVIII: Your Questioning Eyes
Rabindranath Tagore

Your questioning eyes are sad. They
seek to know my meaning as the moon
would fathom the sea.
I have bared my life before your
eyes from end to end, with nothing
hidden or held back. That is why you
know me not.
If it were only a gem, I could break
it into a hundred pieces and string
them into a chain to put on your neck.

If it were only a flower, round and
small and sweet, I could pluck it from
its stem to set it in your hair.
But it is a heart, my beloved.
Where are its shores and its bottom?
You know not the limits of this
kingdom, still you are its queen.
If it were only a moment of pleasure
it would flower in an easy smile, and
you could see it and read it in a moment.

If it were merely a pain it would
melt in limpid tears, reflecting its
inmost secret without a word.
But it is love, my beloved.
Its pleasure and pain are boundless,
and endless its wants and wealth.
It is as near to you as your life, but
you can never wholly know it.


Gabriela Slegrova Photography

For the Union of You and Me
Rabindranath Tagore

It is for the union of you and me
that there is light in the sky.

It is for the union of you and me
that the earth is decked in dusky green.

It is for the union of you and me
that the night sits motionless
with the world in her arms;

Dawn appears opening the eastern door
with sweet murmurs in her voice.

The boat of hope sails along the currents
of eternity toward that union;

Flowers of the ages are being gathered together
for its welcoming ritual.

It is for the union of you and me
that this heart of mine, in the garb of a bride,

Has proceeded from birth to birth upon the surface
of this ever-turning world to chose the beloved.

In the dusky path of a dream
Rabindranath Tagore

IN the dusky path of a dream
I went to seek the love who was mine in a former life.

Her house stood at the end of a desolate street.
In the evening breeze her pet peacock sat drowsing on its perch, and the pigeons were silent in their corner.

She set her lamp down by the portal
and stood before me.

She raised her large eyes to my face and mutely asked,
“Are you well, my friend?”

I tried to answer,
but our language had been lost and forgotten.

I thought and thought;
our names would not come to my mind.

Tears shone in her eyes.
She held up her right hand to me.
I took it and stood silent.

Our lamp had flickered in the evening breeze
and died.

The Gardener XXVII: Trust Love
Rabindranath Tagore

“Trust love even if it brings sorrow.Do not close up your heart.”
“Ah no, my friend,your words are dark,I cannot understand them.”

“The heart is only for giving away with a tear and a song,my love.”
“Ah no,my friend,your words are dark,I cannot understand them.”

“Pleasure is frail like a dewdrop,while it laughs it dies.
But sorrow is strong and abiding.Let sorrowful love
wake in your eyes.”
“Ah no,my friend,your words are dark,I cannot understand them.”

“The lotus blooms in the sight of the sun,and loses all that it has.
It would not remain in bud in the eternal winter mist.”
“Ah no, my friend,your words are darkI cannot understand them.

Excerpts from"The beloved:Reflections on the path of the heart" by Khalil Gibran

Music:
Canon In D-brian Craig

Excerpt from:”Reflections on the path of the heart”
Chapter:At the gate of the temple
Khalil Gibran

Yesterday I stood by the gate of the temple and asked passersby about the mysteries and virtues of love.

A man of middle years passed by,his body wasted,his face dark. Sighing,he said,’Love has made weak the strength I inherited from the First Man.

A youth,his body strong and brawny,passed by.In a voice of song he said,’Love is resolution added to my being, linking my present to generations past and future.’

A woman,her eyes melancholy,passed by and,sighing,said, ‘Love is a deadly poison, the breath of black adders writhing in Hell, flowing and swirling through the sky until it falls covered in dew, only to be lapped up by thirsty spirits.Then they are drunk for a moment,sober for a year, dead for eternity.’

A rosy-cheecked girl passed by and said,smiling, ‘Love is a fountain whose waters the spirit brides pour into the spirits of the strong, making them to ascend in prayer among the stars of night and to sing songs of praise before the sun by day.’

A man passed by.His clothes were black,his beard long. Frowning,he said,’Love is blind ignorance.It begins at youth’s beginning and ends with its end.’

A handsome man with open features passed and gaily said, ‘Love is celestial knowledge that lights our eyes and shows us things as the gods see them.’

A blind man passed,tapping the earth with his cane, and weeping,he said,’Love is a thick mist enshrouding the soul on all sides and veiling the outlines of existence from it-or allowing it to see only the specters of its desires wandering among the rocks,deaf to the sounds of its own cries echoing in the valley.’

A youth carrying a guitar passed and sang out, ‘Love is a magical ray of light shining out from the depths of the sensitive being and illuminating all around it. You see the world as a procession traveling through green meadows,life as a lovely dream erected between wakefulness and wakefulness.’

And old man passed.His back was bent,his feet dragged like pieces of cloth. In a quavering voice he said, ‘Love is rest for the body in the silence of the tomb, peace for the soul in the depths of eternity.’

A child of five years passed and laughed back to me, ‘Love is my father,love is my mother.Only my father and my mother know love.’

The day went by.The people passed before the temple, each describing himself as he spoke of love,revealing his hopes and telling of the mystery of life.

The Beloved: Reflections on the Path of the Heart by Khalil Gibran

Music:
Rain-Brian Crain.

Excerpt from
“The Beloved: Reflections on the Path of the Heart”
Kahlil Gibran

I purified my lips with sacred fire that I might speak of love,
but when I opened my mouth to speak,I found myself mute.
I sang the melodies of a love I did not yet know,but when I came
to know it,the words became a muffled whisper in my mouth,
the songs in my breast a profound silence.

In the past, O people, you asked me about the wonders
and delights of love, and you found satisfaction in what I told you.
But now, when love has draped me with its robes,
I in my turn come to ask you about its ways and virtues.

Is there one among you who can answer me?
I come to ask you about what is in me and
wish you to tell me of my own soul.
Is there one among you who can explain my heart to my own heart, who can explain my essence to my essence itself?
Will you not tell me what is this fire kindled in my breast?

It consumes my faculties and melts my emotions and desires.
What are these invisible hands,soft yet coarse,that grip my spirit in my hours of solitude and loneliness?
Into my heart they pour wine mixed with the bitterness of pleasure and the sweetness of pain.

What are these things rustling about my couch in the silence of the night as I watch makeful for what I know not,listening to what I do not hear,starting at what I do not see,pondering what I do not comprehend,aware of what I do not apprehend, sighing because in sighs are the groanings more beloved to me than

the echoes of laughter and joy,submitting to an unseen power that slays me,then gives me life,then slays me again and again until dawn breaks and light fills the corners of my room.Then I sleep.Yet behind my spent eyelids forms of wakefulness dance and on my stony blanket sway the phantoms of dreams.

What is this which we call ‘love’?
Tell me what is this hidden mystery concealed beyond the ages,
lurking behind appearances,yet making its home
in the heart of being?

What is this unconditioned thought that comes
as the cause of all effects, as the effect of all causes?
What is this wakefulness that encompasses both death and life and molds them into a dream stranger than life and deeper than death?

Tell me, O people, tell me! Who among you would not wake from the sleep of life if love were to brush your spirit with its fingertips?

Who among you would not forsake your father and your mother and your home if the girl whom your heart loved were to call to him?

Who among you would not cross the seas, traverse deserts, go over mountains and valleys to reach the woman whom his spirit has chosen?

What youth would not follow his heart to the ends of the earth to breathe the sweetness of his lover’s breath, feel the soft touch of her hands, delight in the melody of her voice?
What man would not immolate his soul that its smoke might rise to a god who would bear his plea and answer his prayer?

Inspirational & motivational Poems & Quotes on Spirituality & Love by Hafiz/What is laughter? *Every city is a dulcimer*You Don’t Have to Act Crazy Anymore *

Music:
Yanni-Reflections of Passion

What is laughter?
Hafiz
From:”I Heard God Laughing: Renderings of Hafiz”
by Daniel Ladinsky

What is laughter? What is laughter?
It is God waking up! O it is God waking up!

It is the sun poking its sweet head out
From behind a cloud
You have been carrying too long,
Veiling your eyes and heart.

It is Light breaking ground for a great Structure
That is your Real body – called Truth.

It is happiness applauding itself and then taking flight
To embrace everyone and everything in this world.

Laughter is the polestar
Held in the sky by our Beloved,
Who eternally says,

“Yes, dear ones, come this way,
Come this way towards Me and Love!

Come with your tender mouths moving
And your beautiful tongues conducting songs
And with your movements – your magic movements
Of hands and feet and glands and cells – Dancing!

Know that to God’s Eye,
All movement is a Wondrous Language,
And Music – such exquisite, wild Music!”

O what is laughter, Hafiz?
What is this precious love and laughter
Budding in our hearts?

It is the glorious sound
Of a soul waking up…..!

Every city is a dulcimer
Hafiz

There is
The rising up
From light’s embrace

You can see in a summer field or
In a child’s dancing.

Every city is a dulcimer
That plays it’s chorus against
Our ears.

The lid of a pot starts jumping
When water gets ecstatic from fire.

If I ever don’t complete a sentence
While we are together
Accept my apologies and try to understand
This sweet drunk thought.

Birds initially had no desire to fly,
What really happened was this:

God once sat close to them
playing Music.
When He left
They missed him so much

Their great longing sprouted wings,
Needing to search the Sky.

Nothing evolves us like Love.

You Don’t Have to Act Crazy Anymore
Hafez

You Don’t Have to Act Crazy Anymore –
We all know you were good at that.

Now retire, my dear,
From all that hard work you do

Of bringing pain to your sweet eyes and heart.

Look in a clear mountain mirror –
See the Beautiful Ancient Warrior
And the Divine elements
You always carry inside

That infused this Universe with sacred Life
So long ago

And join you Eternally
With all Existence – with God!

Awake, my dear.

Be kind
to your sleeping heart.

Take it out
into the vast fields
of Light

And let it
breathe.
Hafiz

When all your desires are distilled you will cast
just two votes: To love more and be happy.
Hafiz

Where have you taken your sweet song?
Come back and play me a tune.

I never really cared for the things of this world.
It was the glow of your presence
that filled it with beauty.
Hafiz

Come in, my dear
From that harsh world
That has rained elements of stone
Upon your tender face.

Every soul
Should receive a toast from us
For bravery!
Hafiz

Your Questioning Eyes by Rabindranath Tagore

The Gardener XXVIII: Your Questioning Eyes
Rabindranath Tagore

Your questioning eyes are sad. They
seek to know my meaning as the moon
would fathom the sea.
I have bared my life before your
eyes from end to end, with nothing
hidden or held back. That is why you
know me not.

If it were only a gem, I could break
it into a hundred pieces and string
them into a chain to put on your neck.
If it were only a flower, round and
small and sweet, I could pluck it from
its stem to set it in your hair.

But it is a heart, my beloved.
Where are its shores and its bottom?
You know not the limits of this
kingdom, still you are its queen.
If it were only a moment of pleasure
it would flower in an easy smile, and
you could see it and read it in a
moment.

If it were merely a pain it would
melt in limpid tears, reflecting its
inmost secret without a word.
But it is love, my beloved.
Its pleasure and pain are boundless,
and endless its wants and wealth.
It is as near to you as your life, but
you can never wholly know it.

The dance by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Music:
Secret Garden – Fields Of Fortune

The Dance
Oriah Mountain Dreamer

I have sent you my invitation, the note inscribed on the palm of my hand by the fire of living. Don’t jump up and shout, “Yes, this is what I want! Let’s do it!” Just stand up quietly and dance with me.

Show me how you follow your deepest desires, spiralling down into the ache within the ache. And I will show you how I reach inward and open outward to feel the kiss of the Mystery, sweet lips on my own, everyday.

Don’t tell me you want to hold the whole world in your heart. Show me how you turn away from making another wrong without abandoning yourself when you are hurt and afraid of being unloved.

Tell me a story of who you are, And see who I am in the stories I am living. And together we will remember that each of us always has a choice.

Don’t tell me how wonderful things will be . . . some day. Show me you can risk being completely at peace, truly OK with the way things are right now in this moment, and again in the next and the next and the next. . .

I have heard enough warrior stories of heroic daring. Tell me how you crumble when you hit the wall, the place you cannot go beyond by the strength of your own will. What carries you to the other side of that wall, to the fragile beauty of your own humanness?

And after we have shown each other how we have set and kept the clear, healthy boundaries that help us live side by side with each other, let us risk remembering that we never stop silently loving those we once loved out loud.

Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance, the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart. And I will take you to the places where the earth beneath my feet and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again.

Show me how you take care of business without letting business determine who you are. When the children are fed but still the voices within and around us shout that soul’s desires have too high a price, let us remind each other that it is never about the money.

Show me how you offer to your people and the world the stories and the songs you want our children’s children to remember, and I will show you how I struggle not to change the world, but to love it.

Sit beside me in long moments of shared solitude, knowing both our absolute aloneness and our undeniable belonging. Dance with me in the silence and in the sound of small daily words, holding neither against me at the end of the day.

And when the sound of all the declarations of our sincerest intentions has died away on the wind, dance with me in the infinite pause before the next great inhale of the breath that is breathing us all into being, not filling the emptiness from the outside or from within.

Don’t say, “Yes!”

Just take my hand and dance with me.

Song of the Soul by Khalil Gibran *Al-Nay (The Flute) by Khalil Gibran

Music:
Cry For Love-Omar Akram

Song of the Soul
Khalil Gibran

In the depth of my soul there is
A wordless song – a song that lives
In the seed of my heart.
It refuses to melt with ink on
Parchment; it engulfs my affection
In a transparent cloak and flows,
But not upon my lips.

How can I sing it? I fear it may
Mingle with earthly ether;
To whom shall I sing it? It dwells
In the house of my soul, in fear of
Harsh ears.

When I look into my inner eyes
I see the shadow of its shadow;
When I touch my fingertips
I feel its vibrations.
The deeds of my hands heed its
Presence as a lake must reflect
The glittering stars;
My tears reveal it, as bright drops of dew
Reveal the secret of a withering rose.

It is a song composed by contemplation,
And published by silence,
And shunned by clamor,
And folded by truth,
And repeated by dreams,
And understood by love,
And hidden by awakening,
And sung by the soul.

It is the song of love;
What Cain or Esau could sing it?
It is more fragrant than jasmine;
What voice could enslave it?
It is heartbound, as a virgin’s secret;
What string could quiver it?
Who dares unite the roar of the sea
And the singing of the nightingale?
Who dares compare the shrieking tempest
To the sigh of an infant?
Who dares speak aloud the words
Intended for the heart to speak?
What human dares sing in voice
The song of God?

Al-Nay (The Flute)
Khalil Gibran

Give me the Nay and sing,
The secret song of eternity.
The laments of the Nay will linger
Beyond the decline of existence.
Have you, like me,
Chosen the forest dwelling
Rather than the castle?
Have you followed the stream
And climbed the rocks?
Have you anointed your body
With fragrance distilled in light?
Have you been drunk with dawn
In the goblets full of pure air?

Have you, like me,
Sat down at dusk,
Among the glowing languor
Of vines laden with grapes?
Have you lain down on the grass at night
And covered yourself with heavens,
Opening your heart to the future,
Forgetful of the past?

Give me the Nay and sing,
The song in tune with hearts.
The laments of the Nay will linger
Beyond the fading of sins.
Give me the Nay and sing,
Unmindful of troubles and cures.
For each man
Is nothing more than a watercolor sketch.

Echoes of Our Hearts By Joe d’ Mango

Music:
I Miss You-The Daydream

Echoes of Our Hearts
Joe d’ Mango

Sometimes we close our eyes and just listen to the echoes of our hearts. We all fall in love and there are times when we love so much that we lose ourselves in our emotions. More often than not, we wonder why there are love that grows, and love that grows cold.

We would start to search for answers and try to find where love has gone wrong. But in the end, we find ourselves where we started for we cannot question love when it has its own reasons. Love will always be as it always has been….silent, mysterious and deeply profound.

Many of us believe that love is forever, that love never dies, only to be disillusioned in the end when we find our hands empty and our hearts longing. We mistakenly have looked at love as a need to be fulfilled.

But love is a gift given to us. We should not hold it in our hands for we may never find the strength to let it go when it decides to leave. We should only embrace its warmth and glow while it last and then freely open our arms when its time to say good-bye.

When we fall in love, we don’t want that feeling to end for it is everything we are, everything we wanted to be. We pray that love will stay and grow in our hearts. But if it doesn’t then we should never let our lives be taken by it, for life should not end where heartaches begin.

There is always a reason why we have to move on. When we have to say good-bye to the feeling we wanted to stay forever, let us not wave our hands with a heavy heart. For love will have to set its wings free and find the place where it belongs. We may have lost it but then again, when we close our eyes and listen to the echoes of our hearts, we will hear that feeling resounding silently forever.

Then we’ll know that love never left us, for the good that we have become because of love will always stay. Love will always be there, reminding us that we should be thankful and happy not because we have lost love, but because, for once in our lives, that feeling called love lived in our hearts and made us happy.

The dream of unyielding love by William G. Andrews*From" the Greenwood" by William Lisle Bowles

Emile Munier Art

A feather aloft in the air,
Carrying the dream that thwarts despair
A feather of a beautiful dove,
Bearing the dream of unyielding love,
That feather will I follow,
For my dream shall not be hollow.
William G. Andrews

Oh! when ’tis summer weather,
And the yellow bee,with fairy sound,
The waters clear is humming round,
And the cuckoo sings unseen,
And the leaves are waving green
Oh! then ’tis sweet,
In some retreat,
To hear the murmuring dove;
With those whom on earth alone we love,
And to wind through the greenwood together.
William Lisle Bowles-The Greenwood [Doves]