Selections from Western Women's Poetry

How do I love you? Let me count the ways.
I love you to the depths, to the breadths, to the heights
My soul can reach when hidden out of sight.
I love you farther than the ends of the universe and of being.
I love you as much as the day's need
For sunlight and for air.
I love you freely, as humankind loves the right.
I love you humbly, as when they come back from prayer.
I love you with the strength that has branched through me
In my aged griefs, in my childhood's faith.
I love you with a love that walks wandering with the saints.
I love you with all my breath, my smiles, my tears —
And if God should choose me to Himself,
I shall go mad with love of you after death.

I must not think of you, for I am weary — yet I am strong enough
To shatter the thought that lies in wait for me in every delight,
In the reaches of the blue sky, in the sweetest passage of song:
That is my thought of you.
Ah, the thought that hides, sweet and pure,
Behind the loveliest dreams thronging this breast,
Doomed to vanish and stay concealed
Through all the hours of the slow day.
And when sleep comes trailing, closing in the day's cares,
When night lavishes musing upon my long watching,
And all my fears and fetters are loosed —
When the first dream dawns in the first slumber,
I flee with my soul to you, gathered into your heart.

I know not, O Life, what you are.
I only know that I must go, just as you must,
And this question remains a standing secret:
When? and how? and where shall we meet?
We have kept company, O Life, a long age together,
And walked through the sweet seasons and the somber seasons;
How hard it is to give you up when friends are dear —
It costs sighs and precious tears.
And you, heedless, steal our lifetime away without warning,
Choosing only the hour of your own will;
Then you say no good evening, nor give the morning's greeting.