Poetry Archives - Mihaela Limberea

Fate

9th December 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is post 87 of 87 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

Photo by kilarov zaneit on Unsplash edited by me

That you are fair or wise is vain,
Or strong, or rich, or generous;
You must have also the untaught strain
That sheds beauty on the rose.
There is a melody born of melody,
Which melts the world into a sea.
Toil could never compass it,
Art its height could never hit,
It came never out of wit,
But a music music-born
Well may Jove and Juno scorn.
Thy beauty, if it lack the fire
Which drives me mad with sweet desire,
What boots it? what the soldier’s mail
Unless he conquer and prevail?
What all the goods thy pride which lift,
If thou pine for another’s gift?
Alas! that one is born in blight,
Victim of perpetual slight;—
When thou lookest in his face,
Thy heart saith, Brother! go thy ways.
None shall ask thee what thou doest,
Or care a rush for what thou knowest.
Or listen when thou repliest,
Or remember where thou liest,
Or how thy supper is sodden,—
And another is born
To make the sun forgotten.
Surely he carries a talisman
Under his tongue;
Broad are his shoulders, and strong,
And his eye is scornful,
Threatening, and young.
I hold it of little matter,—
Whether your jewel be of pure water,
A rose diamond or a white,—
But whether it dazzle me with light.
I care not how you are drest,
In the coarsest, or in the best,
Nor whether your name is base or brave,
Nor for the fashion of your behavior,—
But whether you charm me,
Bid my bread feed, and my fire warm me,
And dress up nature in your favor.
One thing is forever good,
That one thing is success,—
Dear to the Eumenides,
And to all the heavenly brood.
Who bides at home, nor looks abroad,
Carries the eagles, and masters the sword.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionist, and poet who led the New England Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century.

To read more poems, click here.

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Sonnet LIX: Love’s Last Gift

25th November 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Dante Gabriel Rossetti

This is post 86 of 87 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

Love to his singer held a glistening leaf,
And said: “The rose-tree and the apple-tree
Have fruits to vaunt or flowers to lure the bee;
And golden shafts are in the feathered sheaf
Of the great harvest-marshal, the year’s chief,
Victorious summer; aye, and ’neath warm sea
Strange secret grasses lurk inviolably
Between the filtering channels of sunk reef.

All are my blooms; and all sweet blooms of love
To thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang;
But Autumn stops to listen, with some pang
From those worse things the wind is moaning of.
Only this laurel dreads no winter days:
Take my last gift; thy heart hath sung my praise.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 – 1882) was an English poet, illustrator, painter, and translator, who helped found the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

To read more poems, click here.

Freedom and Truth

11th November 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Margaret Fuller

This is post 85 of 87 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

Black and white photo of a group of people standing in front of the clock window at the Orsay Museum in Paris, France

The shrine is vowed to freedom, but, my friend,
Freedom is but a means to gain an end.
Freedom should build the temple, but the shrine
Be consecrate to thought still more divine.
The human bliss which angel hopes foresaw
Is liberty to comprehend the law.
Give, then, thy book a larger scope and frame,
Comprising means and end in Truth’s great name.

Margaret Fuller (1810 – 1850), sometimes referred to as Margaret Fuller Ossoli, was an American journalist, editor, critic, translator, and women’s rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was the first American female war correspondent and full-time book reviewer in journalism. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States.

To read more poems, click here.

Art

21st October 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Herman Melville

This is post 84 of 87 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt—a wind to freeze;
Sad patience—joyous energies;
Humility—yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity—reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel—Art.

Herman Melville ( 1819 – 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period.

To read more poems, click here.

Sir Walter Raleigh to His Son

7th October 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Walter Raleigh

This is post 83 of 87 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

Three things there be that prosper up apace
And flourish, whilst they grow asunder far,
But on a day, they meet all in one place,
And when they meet, they one another mar;
And they be these: the wood, the weed, the wag.
The wood is that which makes the gallow tree;
The weed is that which strings the hangman’s bag;
The wag, my pretty knave, betokeneth thee.
Mark well, dear boy, whilst these assemble not,
Green springs the tree, hemp grows, the wag is wild,
But when they meet, it makes the timber rot,
It frets the halter, and it chokes the child.
Then bless thee, and beware, and let us pray
We part not with thee at this meeting day.

Sir Walter Raleigh (1553 – 1618) was an English statesman, soldier, writer, and explorer. One of the most notable figures of the Elizabethan era, he played a leading part in English colonisation of North America, suppressed rebellion in Ireland, helped defend England against the Spanish Armada, and held political positions under Elizabeth I. Accused of treason by Elizabeth’s successor, James I, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London and eventually put to death.

Mark McGuinness reads and discusses the poem in his podcast, A Mouthful of Air, which features classic and contemporary poetry. Podcast transcription is available.

To read more poems, click here.

Early Waking

9th September 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Léonie Adams

This is post 82 of 87 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

Four hooves rang out and now are still.
In the dark wall the casements hold
Essential day above each sill,
Just light, and colored like thin gold.
Behind those hooves a drowsy course
All night I rode where hearts were clear,
And wishes blessed at the source,
And for no shape of time stop here.

No more to raise that lively ghost
Which ran quicksilver to the bone:
By a whim’s turn the whole was lost
When all its marrow worth was known.
Ghosts can cast shadows in the breast,
And what was present tears to weep,
Not heart nor mind would bid from rest
As far as sorrow’s, ten years deep.

I travel, not for a ghost’s sake,
One step from sleep, and not for one
Left sleeping at my side I wake.
Before bricks rosy with the dawn,
The hooves will sound beyond the light:
There are dark roads enough to go
To last us through the end of night,
And I will make my waking slow,

It was for unconcerning light
That has not fallen on earth, to stare
An instant only out of night
And with night’s cloudy character,
Before the laden mind shall slip
Past dream and on to brightmost dream
And fetterless high morning dip
Her two cold sandals in the stream.

Léonie Adams (1899 – 1988) was an American poet. She was appointed the seventh Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1948.

To read more poems, click here.

Meeting Ourselves

2nd September 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Vachel Lindsay

This is post 81 of 87 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

Photo by kilarov zaneit on Unsplash edited by me

We met ourselves as we came back
As we hiked the trail from the north.
Our foot-prints mixed in the rainy path
Coming back and going forth.
The prints of my comrade’s hob-nailed shoes
And my tramp shoes mixed in the rain.
We had climbed for days and days to the North
And this was the sum of our gain:
We met ourselves as we came back,
And were happy in mist and rain.
Our old souls and our new souls
Met to salute and explain—
That a day shall be as a thousand years,
And a thousand years as a day.
The powers of a thousand dreaming skies
As we shouted along the trail of surprise
Were gathered in our play:
The purple skies of the South and the North,
The crimson skies of the South and the North,
Of tomorrow and yesterday.

Vachel Lindsay (1879 – 1931) was an American poet. He is considered a founder of modern singing poetry, as he referred to it, in which verses are meant to be sung or chanted.

To read more poems, click here.

A Serenade

12th August 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Pierre Dupont

This is post 80 of 87 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

All roses are alike to me,
Alike to me the myriad flowers,
That May-time, in its sunny glee,
Spreads on the valleys and the bowers;
But in the garland of young girls,
Which glows in fragrance to the sun,
I worship, and I see but one,
My pearl of flowers—my flower of pearls!

Each planet and each wandering star,
Dancing in circles in the skies,
Lulls some young fool to dreams afar,
But all are sisters in my eyes;
For all the lights that round us shine,
All that a maddened brain romances,
Are nothing, darling, to the glances
From those soft, loving eyes of thine.

The nightingale may sing and die,
And still on that same linden-tree,
Another bird will love and sigh,
Before the first has ceased to be.
The sweetest songs we mortals hear
In this dull struggling world below,
All fail to sooth our grief, our woe,
Save thy soft thrilling accents, dear.

Let all the sweet flowers fade away,
Let all the song-birds die of love,
The cheery light forsake the day,
The stars fade in the heavens above;
Rather than that my rose of girls,
My star of gold, my passionate song,
Should suffer half a moment’s wrong—
My pearl of flowers, my flower of pearls!

Pierre Dupont (1821 – 1870) was a songwriter and poet.

To read more poems, click here.

The Alchemist

22nd July 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Louise Bogan

This is post 79 of 87 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

I burned my life, that I might find
A passion wholly of the mind,
Thought divorced from eye and bone,
Ecstasy come to breath alone.
I broke my life, to seek relief
From the flawed light of love and grief.

With mounting beat the utter fire
Charred existence and desire.
It died low, ceased its sudden thresh.
I found unmysterious flesh—
Not the mind’s avid substance—still
Passionate beyond the will.

Louise Bogan (1897 – 1970) was an American poet and literary critic who served as poetry critic for The New Yorker from 1931 until 1969. She was appointed the fourth Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945, the first woman to hold the position.

To read more poems, click here.

Wine of Summer

8th July 2025 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Lord Alfred Douglas

This is post 78 of 87 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

The sun holds all the earth and all the sky
From the gold throne of this midsummer day.
In the soft air the shadow of a sigh
Breathes on the leaves and scarcely makes them sway.
The wood lies silent in the shimmering heat,
Save where the insects make a lazy drone,
And ever and anon from some tree near,
A dove’s enamoured moan,
Or distant rook’s faint cawing harsh and sweet,
Comes dimly floating to my listening ear.

Right in the wood’s deep heart I lay me down,
And look up at the sky between the leaves,
Through delicate lace I see her deep blue gown.
Across a fern a scarlet spider weaves
From branch to branch a slender silver thread,
And hangs there shining in the white sunbeams,
A ruby tremulous on a streak of light.
And high above my head
One spray of honeysuckle sweats and dreams,
With one wild honey-bee for acolyte.

My nest is all untrod and virginal,
And virginal the path that led me here,
For all along the grass grew straight and tall,
And live things rustled in the thicket near:
And briar rose stretched out to sweet briar rose
Wild slender arms, and barred the way to me
With many a flowering arch, rose-pink or white,
As bending carefully.
Leaving unbroken all their blossoming bows,
I passed along, a reverent neophyte.

The air is full of soft imaginings,
They float unseen beneath the hot sunbeams,
Like tired moths on heavy velvet wings.
They droop above my drowsy head like dreams.
The hum of bees, the murmuring of doves.
The soft faint whispering of unnumbered trees.
Mingle with unreal things, and low and deep
From visionary groves,
Imagined lutes make voiceless harmonies.
And false flutes sigh before the gates of sleep.

O rare sweet hour! O cup of golden wine!
The night of these my days is dull and dense,
And stars are few, be this the anodyne!
Of many woes the perfect recompense.
I thought that I had lost for evermore
The sense of this ethereal drunkenness,
This fierce desire to live, to breathe, to be;
But even now, no less
Than in the merry noon that danced before
My tedious night, I taste its ecstasy.

Taste, and remember all the summer days
That lie, like golden reflections in the lake
Of vanished years, unreal but sweet always;
Soft luminous shadows that I may not take
Into my hands again, but still discern
Drifting like gilded ghosts before my eyes.
Beneath the waters of forgotten things.
Sweet with faint memories,

And mellow with old loves that used to burn
Dead summer days ago, like fierce red kings.
And this hour too must die, even now the sun
Droops to the sea, and with untroubled feet
The quiet evening comes: the day is done.
The air that throbbed beneath the passionate heat
Grows calm and cool and virginal again.
The colour fades and sinks to sombre tones.
As when in youthful cheeks a blush grows dim.
Hushed are the monotones
Of doves and bees, and the long flowery lane
Rustles beneath the wind in playful whim.

Gone are the passion and the pulse that beat
With fevered strokes, and gone the unseen things
That clothed the hour with shining raiment meet
To deck enchantments and imaginings.
No joy is here but only neutral peace
And loveless languor and indifference,
And faint remembrance of lost ecstasy.
The darkening shades increase.
My dreams go out like tapers—I must hence.
Far off I hear Night calling to the sea.

Lord Alfred Douglas (1870 – 1945) was an English poet and journalist.

To read more poems, click here.

Mihaela Limberea

Category: Poetry

Fate

Sonnet LIX: Love’s Last Gift

Freedom and Truth

Art

Sir Walter Raleigh to His Son

Early Waking

Meeting Ourselves

A Serenade

The Alchemist

Wine of Summer

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