I Wonder Why You Call to Me Nearly a Year Later Lovelace

To Althea, From Prison

'Longing For Freedom' Alicepopkorn

When love with unconfined wings
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair,
And fettered to her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.

 Florian Imgrund http://www.inthoughts.de/portfolio.html

When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free,
Fishes that tipple in the deep
Know no such liberty.

When, like committed linnets, I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
And glories of my King;
When I shall voice aloud how good

He is, how great should be,
Enlarged winds that curl the flood
Know no such liberty.

'Free' by Alicepopkorn 

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take, That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.

~by Richard Lovelace

Lovelace, dear friend, perhaps you call again because my mind is even freer, my imagination more full of hopes/dreams/desires/future.... Laurel leaves will come and go and wine may flow now but not later but I am here.... I am still here. 

I may be a temporary captive by my commitment to my degree at UF but I can see my freedom clearly on the horizon and my heart sings so loudly it thunders all other sounds; I have concentrated on my love of the arts and they have freed me even in my self imposed educational confinement and my joy and soul soar............ 

So now with only a matter of weeks from completing my degree. I know so much more, feel so much more, 'see' so much more, am so very much more.......

The Good-Morrow

The Shades of Francesca de Rimini and Paolo Malatesta Appear to Dante and Virgil, 1855, Ary Scheffer, Oil on Canvas, The Louvre, Paris, France

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I

Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?

But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?

’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.

If ever any beauty I did see,

Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,

Which watch not one another out of fear;

For love, all love of other sights controls,

And makes one little room an everywhere.

Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,

Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,

Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,

And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;

Where can we find two better hemispheres,

Without sharp north, without declining west?

Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;

If our two loves be one, or, thou and I

Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

Source: The Norton Anthology of Poetry Third Edition (1983)