poem
“My Peace I Leave With You ~ A Poem by J. R. Dos Passos
My Peace I Leave With You
by J. R. Dos Passos
He pondered long, and watched the darkening space
Close the red portals whence the hours had run,
As like young wistful angels, one by one,
The stars cast timid flowers about His face.
“Yea, now another scarlet day is done!”
He cried in anguish, and with sudden grace
Stretched forth His arms, as though He would erase
The few, dim embers of the scattered sun.
“The scarlet day is done, and soon the light
Will wake again my desecrated skies.
Oh, that another dawn might never rise!—
My foolish children!” Through the vast of night
The young stars shivered in a silver horde
Before the Infinite Sorrow of their Lord.
Retrived from: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36508/36508-h/36508-h.htm
A Love Poem Love ~ Johnny Burke
Love is tearful or it’s gay,
It’s a problem or it’s play,
It’s a heartache either way.
But beautiful.
by Johnny Burke
Quoted in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (2012) (18th Ed.). p. 751.
Loss And Gain ~ Poem by Longfellow
Loss And Gain
by Henry Wardsworth Longfellow
When I compare
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
Little room do I find for pride.
I am aware
How many days have been idly spent;
How like an arrow the good intent
Has fallen short or been turned aside.
But who shall dare
To measure loss and gain in this wise?
Defeat may be victory in disguise;
The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.
Trees ~ A Poem by Joyce Kilmer
Trees
by Joyce Kilmer
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Fear Not, Dear Friends, But Freely Live Your Days – Poem by Robert Louis Stevenson
FEAR NOT, DEAR FRIEND, BUT FREELY LIVE YOUR DAYS
Fear not, dear friend, but freely live your days
Though lesser lives should suffer. Such am I,
A lesser life, that what is his of sky
Gladly would give for you, and what of praise.
Step, without trouble, down the sunlit ways.
We that have touched your raiment, are made whole
From all the selfish cankers of man’s soul,
p. 41And we would see you happy, dear, or die.
Therefore be brave, and therefore, dear, be free;
Try all things resolutely, till the best,
Out of all lesser betters, you shall find;
And we, who have learned greatness from you, we,
Your lovers, with a still, contented mind,
See you well anchored in some port of rest.
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Poet’s Song ~ Poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson
The Poet’s Song.
by Alfred Lord Tennyson
THE rain had fallen, the Poet arose,
He pass’d by the town and out of the street,
A light wind blew from the gates of the sun,
And waves of shadow went over the wheat,
And he sat him down in a lonely place,
And chanted a melody loud and sweet,
That made the wild-swan pause in her cloud,
And the lark drop down at his feet.
The swallow stopt as he hunted the fly,
The snake slipt under a spray,
The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak,
And stared, with his foot on the prey,
And the nightingale thought, “I have sung many songs,
But never a one so gay,
For he sings of what the world will be
When the years have died away.”
The Courtesy of the Blind ~ Poem by Wisława Szymborska
The Courtesy of the Blind
The poet reads his lines to the blind.
He hadn’t guessed that it would be so hard.
His voice trembles.
His hands shake.
He senses that every sentence
is put to the test of darkness.
He must muddle through alone,
without colors or lights.
A treacherous endeavor
for his poems’ stars,
dawns, rainbows, clouds, their neon lights, their moon,
for the fish so silvery thus far beneath the water
and the hawk so high and quiet in the sky.
He reads—since it’s too late to stop now—
about the boy in a yellow jacket on a green field,
red roofs that can be counted in the valley,
the restless numbers on soccer players’ shirts,
and the naked stranger standing in a half-shut door.
He’d like to skip—although it can’t be done—
all the saints on that cathedral ceiling,
the parting wave from a train,
the microscope lens, the ring casting a glow,
the movie screens, the mirrors, the photo albums.
But great is the courtesy of the blind,
great is their forbearance, their largesse.
They listen, smile, and applaud.
One of them even comes up
with a book turned wrongside out
asking for an unseen autograph.
—Wisława Szymborska
“The Courtesy of the Blind” from MONOLOGUE OF A DOG: New Poems by Wisława Szymborska, translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.
English translation copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
Pi a Poem byWisawa Szymborska
Pi
by Wislawa Szymborska
The admirable number pi:
three point one four one.
All the following digits are also just a start,
five nine two because it never ends.
It can’t be grasped, six five three five , at a glance,
eight nine, by calculation,
seven nine, through imagination,
or even three two three eight in jest, or by comparison
four six to anything
two six four three in the world.
The longest snake on earth ends at thirty-odd feet.
Same goes for fairy tale snakes, though they make it a little longer.
The caravan of digits that is pi
does not stop at the edge of the page,
but runs off the table and into the air,
over the wall, a leaf, a bird’s nest, the clouds, straight into the sky,
through all the bloatedness and bottomlessness.
Oh how short, all but mouse-like is the comet’s tail!
How frail is a ray of starlight, bending in any old space!
Meanwhile two three fifteen three hundred nineteen
my phone number your shirt size
the year nineteen hundred and seventy-three sixth floor
number of inhabitants sixty-five cents
hip measurement two fingers a charade and a code,
in which we find how blithe the trostle sings!
and please remain calm,
and heaven and earth shall pass away,
but not pi, that won’t happen,
it still has an okay five,
and quite a fine eight,
and all but final seven,
prodding and prodding a plodding eternity
to last.
I Am That by the Mystic Julian of Norwich
I am that
I am that.
I am that which is highest.
I am that which is lowest.
I am that which is All.– Julian of Norwich
