levite

These are composed according roughly to the Metaphysical/Elizabethan sonnet formats, with a certain adaptation of rhyme scheme from Petrarchan, using more or less Tudor/Stewart-era English grammar. FAIR WARNING: If you don't enjoy these kinds of forms, you will not enjoy these.

All poems copyright to me, A.Adler. Do not distribute or reprint without written permission.

Sonnet: The Lover’s Conquest

Shatter my heart and take the shards, for thou
Already hast broke open me. The walls
And doorway of my soul thou’st battered past,
My love’s defenses all breached through, and now
In chaos thou art storming down mine halls
And every passion thou dost find thou steal’st
Or leavest crazed, to fall and fractured be.
Thou foolish thief, for if thou hadst required,
I would with joy have yielded up to thee
My self, my heart, and all I have for thy desire.
Too long have I been calm in thought and deed,
Pining for abandon, and strange fire,
Thy wanton raid, thy pillage fierce, I need:
Ravish my soul and leave my heart a pyre.


Sonnet: Love’s Honesty

Rebuke me not if I my love declare
and scorn to feign you are to me as naught,
or but in merest courtesy I care
for thee. In such devices I’ll be caught:
dissembling lies are not for what I’m made,
or precious masques for friends, some coy charade
for reputation’s weal. I am for thee,
and thou for me, and thus must I confess.
For so unstained’s my love, dishonesty
may not survive in me, or aught that’s less
than truth as whole and unafraid ’fore all
as thou thyself-- to any rank and place
as plain in word as thou art fair of face.
Admit thou love me, or some falsehood cry:
but I love thee, and that I’ll not deny.


Sonnet: Love’s Survival

Weep not, my love, nor sorrow for what’s past:
the wrongs that men have done to thee are over.
For evil’s life though strong can never last:
with care and time thy heart will yet recover.
Had I but been with thee, had we but met,
perhaps I solace might have brought, or yet
thy soul sent ease, averted some torment;
but I-- alas-- of thee was innocent.
We cannot change what’s come before, we may
what’s yet to come alone by will transform--
by mindful planning weather any storm.
So look, I beg thee, forward from this day:
for though I cannot ward thee from all woe,
I’ll set my heart to guard thee, even so.


Sonnet: Love’s Luminary

Think not that discord’s idle tempests dim
the lamp I bear to drive away the dark.
Though rimey dusk with frosts the lantern limn,
and shivered breaths at whiles make their mark;
Unwavered burns my flame, in quiet bright,
immune to night-winds’ moan and mutter.
No hind’rances of ice could snuff this light,
nor mistimed draughts this brand could gutter.
For this my Fire is fueled by love of you
and in all gales of mundane stress burns true--
as undisturbed by shelter as by storm,
not needing Earth or Air to keep its form:
my love for you transcends the bonds and calls
of time, space, death, and other stifling walls.


Sonnet: Love’s Duality

Let me be not untimely rent from thee,
Or thee from me, whose heart thy heart holds dear.
The bond that knits us fast thou must not fear,
Or fret that if I am, thou cannot be.
Oft times two streams upwelling from their birth
Their courses cross to join and solely run,
Their power briefly doubled into one
Then split again, re-twinn’d, to leave the earth.
And yet ’tis said their waters do not meld,
But flow, each drop from every drop distinct,
Two rivers full in single body linked
’Til lapse they to the sev’rance they once held.
We are as one, and yet we too are twain:
Make light thy cares, and let thy love remain.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)