Poetry

For the love of poetry! I used to write, but I can't remember where all my personal poems disappeared to.


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- Robert Frost (The Road Not Taken)


Spirit that form'd this scene,
These tumbled rock-piles grim and red,
These reckless heaven-ambitious peaks,
These gorges, turbulent- clear streams, this naked freshness,
These formless wild arrays, for reasons of their own,
I know thee, savage spirit-- we have communed together,
Mine too such wild arrays, for reasons of their own;
Was't charged against my chants they had forgotten art?
To fuse within themselves its rules precise and delicatesse?
The lyrist's measur'd beat, the wrought-out temple's
Grace-- column and polish'd arch forgot?
But thou that revelest here-- spirit that form'd this scene,
They have remember'd thee.
- Walt Whitman (Spirit That Form'd This Scene)


This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.
- Walt Whitman (A Clear Midnight)


Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops- at all-
And sweetest- in the Gale, it is heard
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm-
I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest sea-
Yet never in extremity
It asked a crumb of me.
- Emily Dickinson (Hope)


I thank You God for this most amazing
Day; for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
And a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
Which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes
I who have died am alive again today,
And this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
Day of life and love and wings; and of the gay
Great happening illimitably Earth
How should tasting, touching, hearing, seeing,
Breathing, any-lifted from the no
Of all nothing- human merely being
Doubt unimaginable You?
Now the ears of my ears awake and
Now the eyes of my eyes are opened.
- E. E. Cummings (I Thank You God)


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 candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the 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.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning (How Do I Love Thee?)


I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:--
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?
- William Wordsworth (Lines Written in Early Spring)


God says to me with a kind
of smile, "Hey how would you like
to be God awhile And steer the world?"
"Okay," says I, "I'll give it a try.
Where do I set?
How much do I get?
What time is lunch?
When can I quit?"
"Gimme back that wheel," says God.
"I don't think you're quite ready yet."
- Shel Silverstein (God's Wheel)


That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.
- Langston Hughes (Justice)


Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken- winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
- Langston Hughes (Dreams)


We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.
We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
- Maya Angelou (Touched by an Angel)


They that have power to hurt and will do none
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces
And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only lives and dies,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity;
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
- Shakespeare (Sonnet 94)


Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art 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 dimmed;
And every fair from fair someone declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not face,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st.
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest 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 lives life to thee.
- Shakespeare (Sonnet 18)


Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad.
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.
- Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I: Scene I


Four seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honeyed cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves.
His soul has its autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contended so to look
On mists in idleness- to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook-
He has his winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
- John Keats (The Human Seasons)


When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact'ry.
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love- then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Til love and fame to nothingness do sink.
- John Keats (When I Have Fears)


This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience- calmed- see, here it is-
I hold it towards you.
- John Keats (This Living Hand)


Let the light of late afternoon
shine through the chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the crickets take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclosed her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
- Jane Kenyon (Let Evening Come)


Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eyes
That finds no object worth its constancy?
- Percy Bysshe Shelley (To the Moon)


And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that flow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.
- George Gordon Byron (She Walks in Beauty)


In summer I am very glad
We children are so small.
For we can see a thousand things
That men can't see at all.
They don't know much about the moss
And all the stones they pass;
They never lie and play among
The forests in the grass.
They walk about a long way off,
And when we're at the sea,
Let father stoop as best he can
He can't find things like me.
But when the snow is on the ground
And all the puddles freeze,
I wish that I were very tall,
High up above the trees.
- Laurence Alma- Tadema (Playgrounds)


Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee,
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Little lamb, I'll tell thee;
Little lamb, I'll tell thee;
He is called by thy name,
For he too calls Himself a Lamb.
He is meek, He is mild,
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by His name.
Little lamb, God bless thee.
Little lamb, God bless thee.
- William Blake (The Lamb)


Even this late it happens;
The coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves.
Stars gather and dreams pour into your pillows,
Sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.
- Mark Strand (The Coming of Light)