We Aren't Afraid To Suffer; We're Scared Of Suffering Alone.

Your self-esteem is a double-edged sword. It all depends on the 'self' of self-esteem whether it'll pull you up from the nadir or push you down from the pinnacle.

Shayan Das

To be criticised demands far more talent than to criticise someone else.

Shayan Das

hi!! i'm assuming here but are you bengali? because I am and i was just curious

i also really like some of your writings! they're really impactful. i saw in one of your posts how much the entire romantic movement affected you and I wanted to say that really shines through your poems and pieces! the entire writing since you were eleven is really relatable because so was i! hope you always keep writing!

Thank you so much for the compliments! Yes, I'm a Bengali, an ardent lover of Tagore and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay besides English Romanticism.

My Bengali poems are posted here.

Valentine's Month Poetry Recommendations 💌

1. Classical (rhymed & metered poetry)

Bright Star by John Keats

To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell

A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns

Love's Philosophy by Percy Bysshe Shelley

How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Browning

Amoretti LXXV by Edmund Spenser

When You Are Old by W.B. Yeats

I Loved You First by Christina Rossetti

I Am Not Yours by Sara Teasdale

To My Dear Husband by Anne Bradstreet

I Love You by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Air and Angels by John Donne

Love and Death by Lord Byron

Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal by Tennyson

2. Modernist/Contemporary (free & blank verses)

Love Sonnet XI by Pablo Naruda

Unending Love by Rabindranath Tagore

[i carry your heart with me] by e.e. cummings

Bird-Understander by Craig Arnold

Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath

For Keeps by Joy Harjo

Always For the First Time by Andre Breton

Love After Love by Derek Walcott

Any Lit by Harryette Mullen

To Be In Love by Gwendolyn Brooks

Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy

Desire by Alice Walker

Romantics by Lisel Mueller

Come, And Be My Baby by Maya Angelou

3. Written by Me (personal selection)

Amore Immortale by Shayan Das

Flawed Perfection by Shayan Das

I Love Thee Not by Shayan Das

A Song of Love by Shayan Das

If Only by Shayan Das

End of Eternity by Shayan Das

For My Valentine by Shayan Das

The duplicitous world has set enough examples of how self-love doesn't portray selfishness rather selfishness portrays self-love.

Shayan Das

Keep kissing me with your lips, embracing me with your arms and crushing me with your thighs until I eventually melt and start flowing through your veins.

Shayan Das

People think they fail in vain, but I say 'in vain' is a phrase for the defeatists. You might never know how unexpectedly your failure brings a rain of gratification in the sunburnt deserts of your adversaries, how miraculously it acts as a source of hope for all those who doubt their aptitudes all day long only 'cause they can't beat you and how enigmatically it opens infinite pages to be a bit more resilient, a bit more powerful, a bit stronger perhaps no book or teacher can ever make you comprehend the same. 

Shayan Das

Success to him was to relish the failure of all the inefficacious attempts that altered forms (in the shapes of disheartening remarks, abominations, taunts, agitation, maladies and envious faces) faster than seasons but couldn't resist him moving.

Shayan Das

With crestfallen eyes, the young boy then asked his father from where melancholy emanates, and the father answered: "The agonies you acquire are the children of elation. If not all, they're the nephews and nieces. 'Tis not the sun just effusing sunlight, but the same sun that draws out the elixir from the oceans and forms the clouds, and the same clouds that take the shape of storms. 'Tis not the aroma enticing the butterflies, but the same fragrance that decides which flower would be plucked first by a lover to give joyance to his cherished. 'Tis not the light just illumining your flesh to perceive yourself in the mirror, but the same light that decides the emergence of the shadow on the other side. The poor Earth has little to produce on its own. So every time you're elated, know that it is burrowed and costs someone else their own contentment, whether animate or inanimate. Every time you're enraptured, know that it's just an altered form of someone else's grief and desolation".

Shayan Das, Excerpt from Origin of Sorrow