Words to Win My Heart

These are the words I want repeated over and over before sleep! The most beautiful poems I have come across so far in life.

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and 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 thee freely as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a 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 thee better after death."

~ "How do I love thee?" by Elizabeth Barrett-Browning

"Shall I compare thee to summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.
And summers lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By source or nature's changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe and eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

~ "Sonnet XVIII" by William Shakespeare