On Thursday the 14th of February, Valentine's Day, we will be having a little tribute to love at the EOI of Ourense. We will be at the computer room waiting for you at 7pm.
Nothing has been totally planned nor will there be a set programme of activities. If you show up I'm sure something will be happening. You yourself might have a text you want to share with us. I'm going to suggest three poems that I like and that someone can read out loud.I also suggest taking a look at Reading to Write USA, a blog that you might access through the menu you'll find to the right of this post. In there you'll also find a little selection of texts related to the topic of love.
WHEN YOU
ARE OLD
by W.B. Yeats
When you are old and grey 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.
SOMETIMES WITH ONE I LOVE
by
Walt Whitmaneffuse unreturn'd love,
But now I think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay is
certain one way or another,
(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not
return'd,
Yet out of that I have written these songs.)
MY MISTRESS’ EYES ARE NOTHING LIKE THE SUN (SONNET 130)
by William ShakespeareMy 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 hairs 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.
I am Ruth Ferreiro. I used to be in English in the EOIOU, now in Portuguese.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful poems indeed.
I would suggest the reading of another well known poem by W.H.Auden which is quite sad but beautiful too.
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Thank you, Ruth. Pretty powerful poem, brought tears to my eyes... which, I admit, is not something too hard to do.
ReplyDeleteThis is a comment that Mª Jesús has sent:
ReplyDeleteRespect and Love
This text has been extracted from the book “The art of loving”, written by the German psychologist and philosopher Erick Fromm. Respect is, according to the author, one of the four components of love. The other three are “care”, “responsibility” and “knowledge”.
“Respect means the concern that the other person should grow and unfold as he is. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me. If I love the other person, I feel one with him or her, but with him as he is, not as I need him to be as an object for my use. It is clear that respect is possible only if I have achieved independence; if I can stand and walk without crutches, without having to dominate and exploit anyone else. Respect exists only on the basis of freedom: “l’amour est l’enfant de la liberté” as an old French song says; love is the child of freedom, never that of domination”.
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ReplyDeleteI'm a bit late but I loved Yeats' poem and I'm driving crazy trying to translate it into Spanish. I've been surfing the net and I didn't find any translation I like. Could you please help me with the expression "glowing bars". Thank's a lot!
ReplyDelete