The Volokh Conspiracy

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Literature

Poetry Monday: "My Three Loves" by Henry S. Leigh

"I knew not which to make my pet, — my pipe, cigar, or cigarette..."

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Here's "My Three Loves" (1875) by Henry S. Leigh (1837-1883), a poignant love poem:

When Life was all a summer day,
And I was under twenty,
Three loves were scattered in my way —
And three at once are plenty.
Three hearts, if offered with a grace,
One thinks not of refusing;
The task in this especial case
Was only that of choosing.
I knew not which to make my pet, —
My pipe, cigar, or cigarette…

For the rest of my "Sasha Reads" playlist, click here. Past poems are:

  1. "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
  2. "The Pulley" by George Herbert
  3. "Harmonie du soir" by Charles Baudelaire
  4. "Dirge Without Music" by Edna St. Vincent Millay
  5. "Clancy of the Overflow" by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson
  6. "Лотова жена" ("Lotova zhena", "Lot's wife") by Anna Akhmatova
  7. "The Jumblies" by Edward Lear
  8. "The Conqueror Worm" by Edgar Allan Poe
  9. "Les Djinns" by Victor Hugo
  10. "I Have a Rendezvous with Death" by Alan Seeger
  11. "When I Was One-and-Twenty" by A.E. Housman
  12. "Узник" ("Uznik", "The Prisoner" or "The Captive") by Aleksandr Pushkin
  13. "God's Grandeur" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
  14. "The Song of Wandering Aengus" by William Butler Yeats
  15. "Je crains pas ça tellment" by Raymond Queneau
  16. "The Naming of Cats" by T.S. Eliot
  17. "The reticent volcano keeps…" by Emily Dickinson
  18. "Она" ("Ona", "She") by Zinaida Gippius
  19. "Would I Be Shrived?" by John D. Swain
  20. "Evolution" by Langdon Smith
  21. "Chanson d'automne" by Oscar Milosz
  22. "love is more thicker than forget" by e.e. cummings