[Sarah] The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd

If all the world and love were young,            
And truth in every shepherd's tongue, 
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.

Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields:
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.

The gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,—
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.

Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.

But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.

Sir Walter Raleigh

P.S. This poem is in direct response to Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love"

Rapunzel Explains the Tower

She said "to keep you safe" and I understood.

She'd had enough of men's wild hands

in the rampion and parsley, one more garden

besieged. Here, only women spoke.

And no mirrors — nothing to make me question

the softness of my skin, the redolent body.

But he came, as they all do,

through the window, all dash,

claiming to love my voice.

One day she found him clinging

to my hair and sent him packing.

She noticed the new swell of my girl's waist.

She knew the danger of 16–year–olds

with golden curls where I was going.

So she came at me with scissors

and turned me out into the world. It was blinding.

In the desert, I heard her words,

that no prince would be my rescue.

I wrap my baby in silk, smash the palace mirrors.

Jeannine Hall Gailey

Beware : Do Not Read This Poem By Ishmael Reed

tonite, thriller was
abt an ol woman , so vain she
surrounded herself w/
many mirrors

it got so bad that finally she
locked herself indoors & her
whole life became the
mirrors

one day the villagers broke
into her house , but she was too
swift for them . she disappeared
into a mirror
each tenant who bought the house
after that , lost a loved one to
the ol woman in the mirror :
first a little girl
then a young woman
then the young woman/s husband

the hunger of this poem is legendary
it has taken in many victims
back off from this poem
it has drawn in yr feet
back off from this poem
it has drawn in yr legs

back off from this poem
it is a greedy mirror
you are into the poem . from
the waist down
nobody can hear you can they ?
this poem has had you up to here
belch
this poem aint got no manners
you cant call out frm this poem
relax now & go w/ this poem

move & roll on to this poem
do not resist this poem
this poem has yr eyes
this poem has his head
this poem has his arms
this poem has his fingers
this poem has his fingertips

this poem is the reader & the
reader this poem

statistic : the us bureau of missing persons re-
ports that in 1968 over 100,000 people
disappeared leaving no solid clues
nor trace only
a space in the lives of their friends