All Time Favourite Sonnet

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

From The Master's Pen

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leapt with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flow'rs in odor and in hue,
Could make me any summer’s story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew.
Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
  Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,
  As with your shadow I with these did play.

-Sonnet XCVIII

The Reason pt. 2

"dig deep" as they would say
examine the flow of emotions

how did you get here?
we need proper investigations

so i become Sherlock,
pipe and hat and coat, all preparations

elementary, my dear Watson!
i say to my pen, after many negotiations

the pen being the only surgeon
to operate on my lunacy.

The Reason pt. 1

sewing old, tattered dreams
with thorns from the sink

as my flowing eyes, it seems,
are stemmed by the ink,

i write the lines
the solace they bring

will be brief and fleeting
but solace nonetheless, i think

the writing equivalent
of crying myself to sleep...