I want to talk to thee
Dora Sigerson

I want to talk to thee of many things
Or sit in silence when the robin sings
His littl' song, when comes the winter bleak,
I want to sit beside thee, cheek by cheek.

I want to hear thy voice my name repeat,
To fill my heart with echoes ever sweet;
I want to hear thy love come calling me,
I want to seek and find but thee, but thee.

I want to talk to thee of little things
So fond, so frail, so foolish that one clings
To keep them ours—who could but understand
A joy in speaking them, thus hand in hand

Beside the fire; our joys, our hopes, our fears,
Our secret laughter, or unchidden tears;
Each day old dreams come back with beating wings,
I want to speak of these forgotten things.

I want to feel thy arms around me pressed,
To hide my weeping eyes upon thy breast;
I want thy strength to hold and comfort me
For all the grief I had in losing thee.                         

What Would I Give
Christina Rossetti

What would I give for a heart of flesh to warm me through,
Instead of this heart of stone ice-cold whatever I do!
Hard and cold and small, of all hearts the worst of all.

What would I give for words, if only words would come!
But now in its misery my spirit has fallen dumb.
O merry friends, go your own way, I have never a word to say.

What would I give for tears! Not smiles but scalding tears,
To wash the black mark clean, and to thaw the frost of years,
To wash the stain ingrain, and to make me clean again.                         

Shore Leave Lorry
Roy Fuller

The gigantic mass, the hard material,
That entering our atmosphere is all
Consumed in an instant in a golden tail,
Is not more alien, nor the moon more pale:
The darkness, countries wide, where muscled beasts
Cannot link fold on fold of mountains, least
Mysterious: the stars are not so still.
Compared with what? In low gear up the hill
The lorry takes its load of strange wan faces,
Which gaze where the loping lion has his bases,
Like busts. Over half the sky a meteor falls;
The gears grind; somewhere a suffering creature calls.

Elegy X: The Dream
John Donne

Image of her whom I love, more than she,
Whose fair impression in my faithful heart,
Makes me her medal, and makes her love me,
As Kings do coins, to which their stamp impart
The value: go, and take my heart from hence,
Which now is grown too great and good for me:
Honours oppress weak spirits, and our sense
Strong objects dull; the more, the less we see.

When you are gone, and Reason gone with you,
Then Fantasy is queen and soul, and all;
She can present joys meaner than you do;
Convenient, and more proportional.
So, if I dream I have you, I have you,
For, all our joys are but fantastical.
And so I 'scape the pain, for pain is true;
And sleep which locks up sense, doth lock out all.

After a such fruition I shall wake,
And, but the waking, nothing shall repent;
And shall to love more thankful sonnets make,
Than if more honour, tears, and pains were spent.
But dearest heart, and dearer image, stay;
Alas, true joys at best are dream enough;
Though you stay here you pass too fast away:
For even at first life's taper is a snuff.

Fill'd with her love, may I be rather grown
Mad with much heart, than idiot with none.