poet

No Longer Mourn for Me ~ by Shakespeare

by

No Longer Mourn for Me

No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O, if, I say, you look upon this verse
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse.
But let your love even with my life decay,
Lest the wise world should look into your moan
And mock you with me after I am gone.

 

By: William Shakespeare

Not Death But Love ~ Poem by Elizabeth Browning

by

Not Death But Love

I thought once how Theocritus had sung

Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,

Who each one in a gracious hand appears

To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:

And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,

The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,

Those of my own life, who by turns had flung

A shadow across me.  Straightway I was ‘ware,

So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move

Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;

And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,–

“Guess now who holds thee!”–”Death,” I said, But, there,

The silver answer rang, “Not Death, but Love.”

– Elizabeth Browning

Quote by Sharon Olds on Writing

by

There is something in me maybe someday to be written; now it is folded, and folded, and folded, like a note in school.

Sharon Olds

Bright Star a Poem by John Keats

by

Bright Star

by John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors;
No-yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever-or else swoon to death.

Shakespeare On Opportunity

by

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.
William Shakespeare.

Four Things ~ Poem by Henry Van Dyke

by

 Four Things

by Henry Van Dyke

Four things a man must learn to do
  If he would make his record true:
  To think without confusion clearly;
  To love his fellow-men sincerely;
  To act from honest motives purely;
  To trust in God and Heaven securely.

Poem: Be The Best of Whatever You Are

by

Be The Best of Whatever You Are

by Douglas Malloch

If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill
    Be a scrub in the valley—but be
  The best little scrub by the side of the rill;
    Be a bush if you can’t be a tree.

  If you can’t be a bush be a bit of the grass,
    And some highway some happier make;
  If you can’t be a muskie then just be a bass—
    But the liveliest bass in the lake!

  We can’t all be captains, we’ve got to be crew,
    There’s something for all of us here.
  There’s big work to do and there’s lesser to do,
    And the task we must do is the near.

  If you can’t be a highway then just be a trail,
    If you can’t be the sun be a star;
  It isn’t by size that you win or you fail—
    Be the best of whatever you are!

Poem by Robert Frost ~ “A Time to Talk”

by

A TIME TO TALK

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29345/29345-h/29345-h.htm.

Fear Not, Dear Friends, But Freely Live Your Days – Poem by Robert Louis Stevenson

by

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 Courtesy of the Blind ~ Poem by Wisława Szymborska

by

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.

Verified by MonsterInsights