Title: Songs of Eden: The Depths of Love in Poetry, Paintings, and Prose

Editors: John and Alexandra Balouziyeh

Year: 2010

Language: English

Specifications: 128 pages; 4.2 in. x 5.8 in., perfect paperback, full color cover and interior, full bleed illustrations

Copyright: © 2010 John and Alexandra Balouziyeh

Price: $12.95 (paperback); $2.95 (ebook)

Description:

"This book is a feast for the eye and ear. It celebrates the creative power of love and welcomes us to the banquet."
- Wayne Martindale
Professor of English
Wheaton College

Enraptured with Love ...

These poems and paintings honor the most eternal of gifts: love given and love received. They transport the reader to a garden whose airs are filled with the joy, fulfillment and bliss of man and woman enraptured with one another's love.

In Words ...

St. Paul | Augustine | Virgil Dante | Chaucer | Shakespeare | Milton | Wordsworth | Wagner & Others

And Images ...

Monet | Bordone | Dicksee Bierstadt | Renoir & Others

Book Excerpts:

The Time of Singing Has Come
- King Solomon, Song of Songs, chapter 6
New King James translation

Where has your beloved gone,
O fairest among women?
Where has your beloved turned aside,
That we may seek him with you?

My beloved has gone to his garden,
To the beds of spices,
To feed his flock in the gardens,
And to gather lilies.
I am my beloved 's,
And my beloved is mine.
He feeds his flock among the lilies.

O my love, you are as beautiful as Tirzah,
Lovely as Jerusalem,
Awesome as an army with banners!
Turn your eyes away from me,
For they have overcome me.
Your hair is like a flock of goats
Going down from Gilead.
Your teeth are like a flock of sheep
Which have come up from the washing;
Every one bears twins,
And none is barren among them.
Like a piece of pomegranate
Are your temples behind your veil.
There are sixty queens
And eighty concubines,
And virgins without number.

My dove, my perfect one,
Is the only one,
The only one of her mother,
The favorite of the one who bore her.
The daughters saw her
And called her blessed,
The queens and the concubines,
And they praised her.

Love Conquers All
- Virgil, "Gallus," Eclogue X

Love alters not for us
His hard decrees,
Not though beneath
The Thracian clime we freeze
Or Italy 's indulgent heaven forego
And in mid-winter tread
Sithonian snow
Or when the bark of elms
Are scorch'd, we keep
On Meroë's burning plains
The Libyan sheep,
In hell, and earth, and seas,
And heavens above,
Love conquers all,
And we must yield to Love.

The Eighteenth Sonnett
- William Shakespeare, "The Eighteenth Sonnet"
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (1906)

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:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:

But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
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.

I Forget All Time
- John Milton, "I Forget All Time"
Paradise Lost: Books III and IV

With thee conversing I forget all time,
All seasons and their change, all please alike.

Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest Birds; pleasant the Sun
When first on this delightful Land he spreads
His orient Beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flour,
Glistring with dew; fragrant the fertil earth

After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful Eevning milde, then silent Night
With this her solemn Bird and this fair Moon,
And these the Gemms of Heav'n, her starrie train:
But neither breath of Morn when she ascends

With charm of earliest Birds, nor rising Sun
On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, floure,
Glistring with dew, nor fragrance after showers,
Nor grateful Eevning mild, nor silent Night
With this her solemn Bird, nor walk by Moon,
Or glittering star-light without thee is sweet.

Bridal Song
- Richard Wagner, "Bridal Song"
Lohengrin, Act III, Scene I

Faithfully conducted, advance to where the blessing of love, we pray, may preserve you. Victorious courage, the reward of love, unites you, through truth, a blessed pair. Champion of virtue, come forward first! Ornament of youth, advance!

Let the clamor of the feast be now over! May the heart's bliss be yours! Let the fragrant chamber, decked out for love, now receive you, escaped from the pageant!

Faithfully conducted, proceed now to where we pray that the blessing of love may preserve you! Victorious courage, love so pure, unite you, through truth, a blessed pair!

Love
- Roy Croft, "Love"
I Love You (1979)

I love you,
Not only for what you are
But for what I am
When I am with you.

I love you,
Not only for what
You have made of yourself
But for what
You are making of me.

I love you,
For the part of me
That you bring out;

I love you,
For putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart
And passing over
All the foolish, weak things
That you can't help
Dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out
Into the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else has looked
Quite far enough to find.

I love you because you
Are helping me to make
Of the lumber of my life
Not a tavern
But a temple;
Out of works
Of my every day
Not a reproach
But a song.