Birches

Birch Forest by Gustave Klimt 

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

- Robert Frost

My Voice

"The Kiss" by Gustave Klimt ( 1862-1918)

Within this restless, hurried, modern world
  We took our hearts’ full pleasure—You and I,
And now the white sails of our ship are furled,
  And spent the lading of our argosy.

Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,
  For very weeping is my gladness fled,
Sorrow hath paled my lip’s vermilion,
  And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.

But all this crowded life has been to thee
  No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell
Of viols, or the music of the sea
  That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell.

- Oscar Wilde

Notes: Oscar Wilde wrote " My voice" after penning "Her Voice". Together the two pieces form a kind of dialogue and provide two perspectives on the same situation. Read an interesting analysis here: http://tinyurl.com/28dy7yv

Her Voice

"Lady with Fan" by Gustav Klimt ( 1862-1918)

The wild bee reels from bough to bough
  With his furry coat and his gauzy wing.
Now in a lily-cup, and now
  Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,
    In his wandering;
Sit closer love: it was here I trow
    I made that vow,

Swore that two lives should be like one
  As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,
As long as the sunflower sought the sun,—
  It shall be, I said, for eternity
    ’Twixt you and me!
Dear friend, those times are over and done,
    Love’s web is spun.

Look upward where the poplar trees
  Sway and sway in the summer air,
Here in the valley never a breeze
  Scatters the thistledown, but there
    Great winds blow fair
From the mighty murmuring mystical seas,
    And the wave-lashed leas.

Look upward where the white gull screams,
  What does it see that we do not see?
Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams
  On some outward voyaging argosy,—
    Ah! can it be
We have lived our lives in a land of dreams!
    How sad it seems.

Sweet, there is nothing left to say
  But this, that love is never lost,
Keen winter stabs the breasts of May
  Whose crimson roses burst his frost,
    Ships tempest-tossed
Will find a harbour in some bay,
    And so we may.

And there is nothing left to do
  But to kiss once again, and part,
Nay, there is nothing we should rue,
  I have my beauty,—you your Art,
    Nay, do not start,
One world was not enough for two
    Like me and you.

- Oscar Wilde

Notes:

1) Learn more about Gustav Klimt- Austrian Symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement at: www.iklimt.com

2) Listen to this poem at: http://youtu.be/7VEvN8weHyA