How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways
Poets put into words things we feel but cannot say – and now you can bring the sentiments of your favourite poems home with you
Whether they’re writing book-length sagas and ballads or three perfect lines of a haiku, the finest poets are masters of language. With each rhythmical line, they manage to capture the thoughts and feelings of people the world over, inspire us to look at life in new ways, to appreciate the brevity of each moment, and to marvel at all of nature. If you’ve not thought much about poetry since the nursery rhymes of childhood or the sonnets of high-school English, here are some ways to pause a while and bring the vibe of your favourite verses to life at home.
Revisit romantic sonnets
Yes, you may have a favourite Shakespearean comedy or tragedy, but there are many, many delights to be found in his 154 sonnets. Sonnet 18, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day? is said to not only perfectly capture the essence of true love, but also to be one of the most beautifully written verses in the English language.
GET THE LOOK: Let the romance of poetry inspire your home. If you don’t have a Juliet balcony off your boudoir from which to entice your lover, let roses climb your walls, add sheer floating curtains that billow in the breeze, and fling your windows open each morning to greet the day. The love bower is complete.
Escapes to pen a poem in
Yes, you may have a favourite Shakespearean comedy or tragedy, but there are many, many delights to be found in his 154 sonnets. Sonnet 18, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day? is said to not only perfectly capture the essence of true love, but also to be one of the most beautifully written verses in the English language.
GET THE LOOK: Let the romance of poetry inspire your home. If you don’t have a Juliet balcony off your boudoir from which to entice your lover, let roses climb your walls, add sheer floating curtains that billow in the breeze, and fling your windows open each morning to greet the day. The love bower is complete.
Escapes to pen a poem in
Keep up with the new poets
The way youngsters embrace spoken-word poetry with hard-and-fast poetry slams, performance poetry, and even hip hop and rap, shows that poetry still meets a need in modern life.
GET THE LOOK: Street art, graffiti and an industrial look (think concrete and raw steel) will help bring this vibe home. Serious street artists are for hire, so check with your community arts centre or youth outreach programme to find youngsters who are handy with a spray can and have plenty to say. The Jimmie Martin wallpaper (pictured) delivers attitude in spades.
The way youngsters embrace spoken-word poetry with hard-and-fast poetry slams, performance poetry, and even hip hop and rap, shows that poetry still meets a need in modern life.
GET THE LOOK: Street art, graffiti and an industrial look (think concrete and raw steel) will help bring this vibe home. Serious street artists are for hire, so check with your community arts centre or youth outreach programme to find youngsters who are handy with a spray can and have plenty to say. The Jimmie Martin wallpaper (pictured) delivers attitude in spades.
The bathroom is the one space in the house that you can go a little wild. Graffiti-inspired feature wall tiles add a modern poetic edge.
Give a nod to nursery rhymes
We sing nursery rhymes to our babies because talking in musical and rhyming patterns is one of the fastest (and most fun) ways we acquire language.
GET THE LOOK: My childhood favourite was Winnie the Pooh, but I loved A.A. Milne’s poetry books too. One way to bring your child’s best-loved books to life is with a vibrant mural from a favourite scene. But please, none of that Disney nonsense – stick to the delightful original characters of illustrator E. H. Shepard (who also created the first Wind in the Willows pictures).
We sing nursery rhymes to our babies because talking in musical and rhyming patterns is one of the fastest (and most fun) ways we acquire language.
GET THE LOOK: My childhood favourite was Winnie the Pooh, but I loved A.A. Milne’s poetry books too. One way to bring your child’s best-loved books to life is with a vibrant mural from a favourite scene. But please, none of that Disney nonsense – stick to the delightful original characters of illustrator E. H. Shepard (who also created the first Wind in the Willows pictures).
The rhymes of Dr Seuss are eternally popular with children, and the bathroom is the perfect place to inject a little of his fun and humour.
Embrace haiku meditations
What could be more satisfying than the tiny perfection of a haiku: three lines, beginning and ending with five syllables and a middle line of seven. And what could be harder to get just right? But like Japanese landscapes, which try to condense all of nature (mountains, rivers, woods) into one perfect courtyard, a haiku can compress thoughts into their essence. Harder than it looks, a delight when it is done well.
Browse more Asian-inspired gardens
What could be more satisfying than the tiny perfection of a haiku: three lines, beginning and ending with five syllables and a middle line of seven. And what could be harder to get just right? But like Japanese landscapes, which try to condense all of nature (mountains, rivers, woods) into one perfect courtyard, a haiku can compress thoughts into their essence. Harder than it looks, a delight when it is done well.
Browse more Asian-inspired gardens
GET THE LOOK: In the same way that a haiku eliminates extraneous detail, so your haiku room is distilled down to its essence. A floor, walls, the simplest mat to sit on. Serene and very, very calming.
Embrace the seasons
Oh, you can just picture those Victorian poets with their hosts of golden daffodils (hello Mr Wordsworth) striding about the countryside. Along with heralding the arrival of spring, they celebrated the poignancy of autumnal changes, the crispness of winter, and the lassitude of mid-summer. Pull out a poem for each season to remind yourself to stop and appreciate the changing year. Reread William Butler Yeats’ When You Are Old and enjoy the sentiment.
Oh, you can just picture those Victorian poets with their hosts of golden daffodils (hello Mr Wordsworth) striding about the countryside. Along with heralding the arrival of spring, they celebrated the poignancy of autumnal changes, the crispness of winter, and the lassitude of mid-summer. Pull out a poem for each season to remind yourself to stop and appreciate the changing year. Reread William Butler Yeats’ When You Are Old and enjoy the sentiment.
GET THE LOOK: Banish fake plants or silk flowers. Instead, take a country drive this weekend and stop by a roadside flower stand for armloads of spring daffodils, jonquils and freesias. In your own garden, combine winter pruning with decorating: as the magnolias start to drop and blossoms appear on the fruit trees, bring in great branches to decorate your tables. The fragrance alone will banish any residual winter blues.
Hark back to medieval times
Harder to dig into, with their tricky Old English, but once you find their rhythm the colourful and earthy medieval poets can be rewarding … even without the flourishes of troubadours and street-performing minstrels delivering their words with passion. Light a fire in your stone hall, throw a beast on a spit and dig into Beowulf or the bawdy world of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.
Harder to dig into, with their tricky Old English, but once you find their rhythm the colourful and earthy medieval poets can be rewarding … even without the flourishes of troubadours and street-performing minstrels delivering their words with passion. Light a fire in your stone hall, throw a beast on a spit and dig into Beowulf or the bawdy world of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.
Appreciate icons of old
Those stirring poems we all had to memorise at school – Rudyard Kipling’s If, the sorry worlds of T.S. Eliot’s men, the heroics of the Australian and New Zealand bush – created a vision of manhood for whole generations. Sure, from our 21st-century perspective their goals of conquer and colonise seem antiquated, but they were very much men of their times. A look at their poetry helps us get inside their world view, their time and place.
Houses inspired by the Australian shed
Those stirring poems we all had to memorise at school – Rudyard Kipling’s If, the sorry worlds of T.S. Eliot’s men, the heroics of the Australian and New Zealand bush – created a vision of manhood for whole generations. Sure, from our 21st-century perspective their goals of conquer and colonise seem antiquated, but they were very much men of their times. A look at their poetry helps us get inside their world view, their time and place.
Houses inspired by the Australian shed
GET THE LOOK: The traders and conquerers were often on the lookout for domestic treasures: silks, fabrics, carvings, spices and teas. You may not share the politics, but the colonial look of campaign chests, luxurious folding chairs, and drapes of fabric from every corner of the globe speaks of a time when people happily mixed cultures and continents.
Honour the wise words of women
Not nearly as feted as the men of their time, but much more appreciated today, the body of work from female poets is diverse – from Emily Dickinson and the Brontë sisters, to the moderns like Sylvia Plath. And who can resist Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways and her great love story with Robert Browning. Beats The Bachelor, no?
Not nearly as feted as the men of their time, but much more appreciated today, the body of work from female poets is diverse – from Emily Dickinson and the Brontë sisters, to the moderns like Sylvia Plath. And who can resist Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways and her great love story with Robert Browning. Beats The Bachelor, no?
GET THE LOOK: You may be over all those ‘eat’ or ‘love’ words on the wall, so try the more subtle ways of rejoicing in (or lamenting) the ways of love, with some fresh calligraphy. Add a romantic chair, a mirror for sighing into, and plenty of lush pillows for your swooning.
Surround yourself with words
Put down the phone – unless it’s carrying a poetry feed from your Poetry Foundation or The Love Book App – and pick up a pen to write out your favourite words. Keep them somewhere you start the day – your bathroom wall, mirror, or kitchen bench – and let the beauty of the written/spoken word ground you.
Put down the phone – unless it’s carrying a poetry feed from your Poetry Foundation or The Love Book App – and pick up a pen to write out your favourite words. Keep them somewhere you start the day – your bathroom wall, mirror, or kitchen bench – and let the beauty of the written/spoken word ground you.
Craft your own verses
Create a beautiful spot to write your own poetry. Away from the computer or TV, surrounded by a few favourite things and beautiful books.
Create a beautiful spot to write your own poetry. Away from the computer or TV, surrounded by a few favourite things and beautiful books.
TELL US
How do you make poems part of your home? Who is your favourite poet? Tell us in the Comments.
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Browse more stories that are good for your health
How do you make poems part of your home? Who is your favourite poet? Tell us in the Comments.
MORE
Browse more stories that are good for your health
From the “white-flower’d Jasmin, and the broad-leav’d Myrtle” celebrated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his ode to nature in The Eolian Harp, to the contemplative snowy woods of American poet Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, a poem can take you to some spectacular places in your imagination and remind you to appreciate the beauty all around us in nature.
GET THE LOOK: Why rely on poetry to remind you to delight in the marvels of the natural world? Viewing your garden as a delight to be nurtured rather than a chore on your list will bring reverence to your everyday, especially if you fill it with colour and heady perfume.