The White Rose
By John Boyle O’Reilly – 1844-1890

The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.

But I send you a cream-white rosebud
With a flush on its petal tips;
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips.

I was not going to post another poem today, since I posted several yesterday for Valentine’s Day, but, I came across the picture above and wanted to use it so I quickly searched poems about roses. (I didn’t want to use “Roses are red, Violets are blue, Sugar is sweet, And so are you.” It’s just too cliché.) as I was looking at poems, I came across the one above and liked it. Then, I read about the poet’s life, which I found fascinating. Hopefully, you will too.

I hope all of you had a wonderful Valentine’s Day, whether you were with a loved one, or like me, all by yourself. The only thing I think I really missed is I wish I had a box of chocolate caramels. I need to run to the grocery store this evening, maybe I can find a box half off in a post-Valentine’s Day sale.

 

About the Poet

John Boyle O’Reilly was born near Drogheda, Ireland, on June 24, 1844. His father, William David O’Reilly, directed the local school, and his mother, Eliza Boyle, managed an orphanage. After several years at his father’s school, he turned to journalism, taking apprenticeships first at the local paper Drogheda Argus and then at The Guardian in Preston, England, where he lived with his aunt and uncle.

In 1863, after four years in Preston, O’Reilly enlisted in the Tenth Hussars, a cavalry regiment stationed in Ireland. However, beginning in 1865 he was also an active member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, or the Fenians, a revolutionary group planning an armed uprising against British rule. He was dedicated to recruiting other Irish soldiers to the cause, but in 1866 some of his recruits within the Hussars exposed his dual allegiance. Within the year he was court-martialed, convicted of treason, and sentenced to twenty years of penal servitude. After spending time in several English prisons, he was placed on the last ship transporting convicts to Australia.

O’Reilly escaped from the Penal Colony of Western Australia in 1869, slipping away from his convict camp and securing passage on an American whaling ship. He then spent eight months at sea, on a series of different vessels, before disembarking in Philadelphia. Once in America, he moved to Boston and began working at the country’s foremost Catholic newspaper, The Pilot, where he became editor in 1874. He remained editor for over twenty years.

Between 1873 and 1886, O’Reilly also published four poetry collections: In Bohemia (The Pilot Publishing Co., 1886), The Statues in the Block and other poems (Roberts Brothers, 1881), Songs, Legends, and Ballads (The Pilot Publishing Co., 1878), and Songs from the Southern Seas and other poems (Roberts Brothers, 1873). Despite his involvement in Boston’s literary scene, only a few of his poems were reprinted in anthologies. Of those few, the most popular was “A White Rose” from In Bohemia. He also penned a novel, Moondyne: a story from the under-world (The Pilot Publishing Co., 1879).

O’Reilly married another journalist, Mary Murphy, in 1872, and together they had four children. He died on August 9, 1890, after an overdose of sleeping medicine. He has been honored with a bronze sculpture on the Fenway in Boston and with several buildings and associations bearing his name.

Why I Love Thee?
By Sadakichi Hartmann

      Why I love thee?
  Ask why the seawind wanders,
Why the shore is aflush with the tide,
Why the moon through heaven meanders;
Like seafaring ships that ride
On a sullen, motionless deep;
  Why the seabirds are fluttering the strand
    Where the waves sing themselves to sleep
      And starshine lives in the curves of the sand!

Carl Sadakichi Hartmann was born on November 8, 1867, in Nagasaki Japan. His poetry collections include Naked Ghosts: Four Poems (Fantasia, 1925), Tanka and Haiku: 14 Japanese Rhythms (G. Bruno, 1915), and My Rubaiyat (Mangan, 1913). A dramatist, fiction writer, and art critic, he died in St. Petersburg, Florida, on November 21, 1944.

About the Poem: A “pictorial suggestion” of love.

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The More Loving One
By W. H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

W. H. Auden was admired for his unsurpassed technical virtuosity and ability to write poems in nearly every imaginable verse form; his incorporation of popular culture, current events, and vernacular speech in his work; and also, for the vast range of his intellect, which drew easily from an extraordinary variety of literatures, art forms, social and political theories, and scientific and technical information.

About the Poem: At once a celebration of unrequited love and a metaphysical poem about the difficulty of finding ‘love’ and meaning in a secular age.

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Love Song for Love Songs
By Rafael Campo

A golden age of love songs and we still
can’t get it right. Does your kiss really taste
like butter cream? To me, the moon’s bright face
was neither like a pizza pie nor full;
the Beguine began, but my eyelid twitched.
“No more I love you’s,” someone else assured
us, pouring out her heart, in love (of course)—
what bothers me the most is that high-pitched,
undone whine of “Why am I so alone?”
Such rueful misery is closer to
the truth, but once you turn the lamp down low,
you must admit that he is still the one,
and baby, baby he makes you so dumb
you sing in the shower at the top of your lungs.

Rafael Campo was born in Dover, New Jersey, on November 24, 1964. He attended both Amherst College and Harvard Medical School before publishing his first collection of poems, The Other Man Was Me: A Voyage to the New World, which won the National Poetry Series Open Competition in 1993. Campo is a practicing physician at Harvard Medical School and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

About the Poem: Love is within the two who feel the love, and no one else can change that.

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I Needed Your Body Near Me
By Timothy Liu

An ocean is nothing, there is no separation
between two lovers. And I knew just what
it took: six hours, two meals with a movie
in between, blinders over eyes, plugs in ears
as I tried to get some sleep. When I awoke,
I knew I’d crossed more than a time zone
for my body was always nearer to yours
than anyone else’s still sleeping in your bed—

Timothy Liu’s most recent books of poems are Polytheogamy and Bending the Mind Around the Dream’s Blown Fuse. He lives in Manhattan.

About the Poem: A long distance relationship.

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♥️HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY♥️

Thank you, Susan, for the beautiful Valentine’s Day Card pictured above.