The Sweetest Thing That Ever Grew

Well-meaning readers, you that come as friends,
continuous as the stars that shine,
make me thy lyre, even as the forest is,
from cave to cave through the thick-twined vine. 4

Or with thy mind against my mind, to hear
and for mysterious things of faith rely,
the low light fails us in elusive skies,
and, in the churchyard cottage, I. 8

A sloop of amber slips away.
O blush not so! O blush not so!
Inside, you hold me back, make me wait
while at the bed's foot lay the quiver, bow. 12

It's the wetness I like,
all over the sheets and you.
You are a complete instrument:
happy and proud; at last I knew. 16

Sometimes also kneeling for hours on end,
and ever when the moon was low,
the storm in my dream made me open
on the faces that drift and blow. 20

A moon swims out of a cloud.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
What means at this unusual hour the light?
I had a dream, which was not all a dream. 24

When every cell of my body is bursting with life
and echoes of the harshest sound are sweet,
I see your lips descend to catch my lips.
O let but mine their pouting meet! 28

The tale of love gives fame for evermore.
So burns the God, consuming in desire.
Penetration till it comes like the flood -
May I beneath the shaft expire! 32

All I request is a portion of love;
but wherever the truth may be,
full of love, and full of truth,
lovers, continual lovers, only repay me. 36

Be what you will, black night, red dawn.
My darling is hotter than midsummer night.
I loosen my robe and drift in an orchid boat
deep in the deepening night. 40

In a glitter of ecstasy,
we, from the fetters of the light unbound,
rise, and float away on teeming pleasure,
seek out - less often sought than found. 44

The tide is full, the moon lies fair,
fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail;
and the warm wind is neither still nor loud,
like the seething sound in a shell. 48

Glory be to God for dappled things!
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
it is a beauteous evening, calm and free. 52

Love delivers to me its sweetest thoughts,
translucent lovely shining clear.
I sense another world close to me,
its accents of another sphere. 56

A dream remembered in a dream -
in such a night, when passing clouds give place.
In happy dreams your smile makes day of night
for I am blind to all but to thy face. 60

And the midnight moon is weaving.
O slip the collar off of base desire!
A tear-drop glistening on the lash -
the universal wheel of Fate in ire. 64

So sweet that joy is almost pain.
Passion or conquest , wander where they will;
and beautiful it is to walk beside
kissed by strawberries on the hill. 68

I shall not see the shadows,
the cloud of mortal destiny.
Feed the heart of the night with fire
till, framed with perfect symmetry. 72

Eros seizes and shakes my very soul.
In seas of flame my plunging soul is drowned.
Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
How should we grow in other ground? 76

For you and what we do at night together -
those paths so dear to me -
responding, growing warm, oh, in how slow a fashion.
If ever two were one, then surely we. 80

My thoughts might not be, like my body, bare.
In liquid raptures I dissolve all o'er.
Two lives, a moment, fullness, bliss
between the sun and moon upon the shore. 84

The moonlight musical, the darkness clinging,
the ruby grinning for its bliss,
fragrance too rich for keeping, too light to remember,
be praised that time can stop like this! 88

One look is more than a thousand in gold;
and whom I love, I love indeed.
We meet in moments truant from time.
Let us away, my love, with happy speed! 92

I love your face when we are making love.
I love to feel you grow and grow be -
deeper and deeper into,
deeply dipping inside me. 96

I open to you like the petals of a rose.
I know your taste and the smell of you.
There is nothing I need do to please but be
--- the sweetest thing that ever grew. 100

Reviews

[Mark]

Am I to understand from your note below that you have composed this delicious tribute to a lover and his gifts from lines lifted from 100 OTHER poems?! I will try to find markymark's tribute to his lover's body in the books on a Library shelf for you to peruse--Similarly circumspect handling (with occasional bursts of clarity!)

[Linda Marie Van Tassell]

A cento is a collage-poem composed of lines lifted from other sources -- often, though not always, from great poets of the past. In Latin the word cento means ''patchwork,'' and the verse form resembles a quilt of discrete lines stitched together to make a whole. The word cento is also Italian for ''one hundred,'' and some mosaic poems consist of exactly 100 lines culled by one poet from the work of another to pay tribute to him or her. The ancient Greeks assembled centos in homage to Homer, the Romans in homage to Virgil.

For my cento, I chose 100 different poems by different poets. To add to the complexity, I also created a cento with the abcb rhyme scheme throughout. It was a long and arduous task but was well worth the effort.


1. "The Flaming Heart" by Richard Crashaw
2. "I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud" by William Wordsworth
3. "Ode To The West Wind" by Percy Bysshe Shelley
4. "The Lotus-Eaters" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
5. "121" by E. E. Cummings
6. "The Hind and The Panther" by John Dryden
7. "Ave Atque Vale" by Algernon Charles Swinburne
8. "We Are Seven" by William Wordsworth
9. "Sunset" by Emily Dickinson
10. "Sharing Eve's Apple" by John Keats
11. "Loving Along Western Rivers" by Stephen J. Lyons
12. "Psyche Gazing On Cupid" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
13. "The Outpouring" by David Meuel
14. "Whaia I Te Po" by Trudi Paraha
15. "Ode To Life" by Pablo Neruda
16. "Porphyria's Lover" by Robert Browning
17. "Childhood" by Rainer Maria Rilke
18. "Mariana" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
19. "I Woke Up" by Patti Tana
20. "People" by D. H. Lawrence
21. "197" by E. E. Cummings
22. "The Dream" by George Gordon, Lord Byron
23. "Sonnet In The Mail Coach" by Henry Taylor
24. "Darkness" by George Gordon, Lord Byron
25. "The Dome of the Inner Sky" by Rumi
26. "Margaret By The Mere Side" by Jean Ingelow
27. "In The Kitchen" by Alexander Taylor
28. "Laili and Majnun" by Nizami
29. "Love" by Jami
30. "Transformation of Daphne Into A Laurel" by John Dryden
31. "Witt" by Patti Smith
32. "Translation from the Medea of Euripides" by Lord Byron
33. "Dark One" by Mirabai
34. "Neither Out Far Nor In Deep" by Robert Frost
35. "Song For A Girl" by John Dryden
36. "City Of Orgies" by Walt Whitman
37. "Possessed" by Charles Baudelaire
38. "All Year Long" by Anonymous from the Chinese
39. "Plum Blossoms" by Li Ch'ing-chao
40. "Butterflies Love Flowers" by Li Ch'ing-chao
41. "Ballad of a Wilful Woman" by D. H. Lawrence
42. "Tristram of Lyonesse" by Algernon Charles Swinburne
43. "Cloudburst" by Ed L. Wier
44. "On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year" by Lord Byron
45. "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold
46. "Tears, Idle Tears" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
47. "Winter: My Secret" by Christina Rossetti
48. "A Young Wife" by D. H. Lawrence
49. "Pied Beauty" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
50. "A Forsaken Garden" by Algernon Charles Swinburne
51. "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats
52. "It Is A Beauteous Evening" by William Wordsworth
53. Untitled Poem by Francesco Petrarch
54. "The Crystal Cabinet" by William Blake
55. "The Solitary Person" by Rainer Maria Rilke
56. "Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse" by Matthew Arnold
57. "Recollections of Love" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
58. "A Nocturnal Reverie" by Anne Finch
59. "Monna Innominata" by Christina Rossetti
60. "Return" translated from the Persian by Gertrude Bell
61. "Stanzas for Music" by Lord Byron
62. "Bird Parliament" translated from the Persian by Edward Fitzgerald
63. "The Lesson of the Flowers" translated from the Persian by E. H. Palmer
64. "Oh, Weep No More" translated from the Persian by Gertrude Bell
65. "The Nightingales" by Percy Bysshe Shelley
66. "The Wild Swans at Coole" by William Butler Yeats
67. "Birds' Nests" by John Clare
68. "The Barefoot Boy" by John Greenleaf Whittier
69. "Song" by Christina Georgina Rossetti
70. "Memorial Verses" by Matthew Arnold
71. "Itylus" by Algernon Charles Swinburne
72. "The Building Of The Ship" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
73. Untitled by Sappho
74. "Eloisa To Abelard" by John Gay
75. "The Dream" by Theodore Roethke
76. "Stanzas From The Grande Chartreuse" by Matthew Arnold
77. "The Quiet Glades Of Eden" by Robert Graves
78. "Strange Fits Of Passion Have I Known" by William Wordsworth
79. "No, Never Think" by Alexander Pushkin
80. "To My Dear And Loving Husband" by Anne Bradstreet
81. "Carnal Knowledge" by Thom Gunn
82. "The Imperfect Enjoyment" by Lord Rochester
83. "Meeting In A Lift" by Vladimir Holan
84. "The Lotus-Eaters" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
85. "A Note On Propertius" by Fleur Adcock
86. "Anointed Vessel" by Paul Verlaine
87. "Himalayan Balsam" by Anne Stevenson
88. "Meeting Point" by Louis Macneice
89. "Parody Of A Lover" by Li Ch'ung as translated by Anne Birrell
90. "The Pains Of Sleep" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
91. "More Beautiful Than Your Eyes" by Sa'id 'Aql
92. "The Eve of St. Agnes" by John Keats
93. "Bio Logos" by Molly Peacock
94. "I Love It When" by Sharon Olds
95. "Wet" by Marge Piercy
96. "Creation" by Dara Prisamt Murray
97. "Moonburn" by Laura H. Kennedy
98. "Keys" by Barbara J. Garshman
99. "The Surge" by Molly Peacock
100. "Lucy Gray" by William Wordsworth