Her favorite poems
Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter, and confounds him there;
Sap check'd-with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness every where:
Then, were not summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was;
But flowers distill'd, though they with winter
meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives
sweet.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet V
TO***
O wondrous moment! There before meA radiant, fleeting dream you stood,
A vision fancy fashioned for me,
A glimpse of perfect womanhood!
Through all life’s sadness, all its flaunted
Bad hopeless flurry and unrest
Your lovely face my spirit haunted,
Your tender voice my ear caressed.
Swift tempests, o’er me, wrathful, breaking,
Dispelled the dulcet dreams of yore.
Your image blurred, my heart forsaking,
Your voice caressed my ear no more.
In cold and gloomy isolation
The years sped by, the lonely years,
Bereft of God, of inspiration,
Bereft of life, and love, and tears.
And then – o bliss! – time’s flight defeating,
You came again and ‘fore me stood,
A vision radiant and fleeting,
A dream of perfect womanhood.
My heart is filled with sweet elation,
Anew it craves, anew reveres,
And is awake to inspiration
Awake to life, and love, and tears.
Alexander Pushkin
