Happy Anniversary

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth of height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love the freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, ---I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! ---and , if God choose,
I shall but love the better after death.

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou are more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor loose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

-William Shakespeare

To Be One With Each Other

What greater thing is there for two human souls
than to feel that they are joined together to strengthen
each other in all labor, to minister each other in all sorrow,
to share with each other in all gladness,
to be one with each other in the
silent unspoken memories?

George Eliot

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY MY "LITTLE MAN"
August 22, 2008