Poetry
“The Sermon” Poem by Herman Melville
The Sermon
“The ribs and terrors in the whale,
Arched over me a dismal gloom,
While all God’s sun-lit waves rolled by,
And lift me deepening down to doom.
“I saw the opening maw of hell,
With endless pains and sorrows there;
Which none but they that feel can tell—
Oh, I was plunging to despair.
“In black distress, I called my God,
When I could scarce believe him mine,
He bowed his ear to my complaints—
No more the whale did me confine.
“With speed he flew to my relief,
As on a radiant dolphin borne;
Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone
The face of my Deliverer God.
“My song for ever shall record
That terrible, that joyful hour;
I give the glory to my God,
His all the mercy and the power.”
“Forever Dance” Poem about Joy by Hafiz
Forever Dance
I am happy even before I have a reason.
I am full of Light even before the sky
Can greet the sun or the moon.
Dear companions,
We have been in love with God
For so very, very long.
What can Hafiz now do but Forever
Dance!
Hafiz
“The Way of It” Poem by Grantland Rice
The Way Of It
‘THERE are roads that lead through valleys where the
grass is soft and green ;
There are lanes that lead through morning where the
friendly maples lean;
But for those who face the battle where the far height
holds its thrillThe only goal worth finding
Where the rock-filled road is winding,
Where the heavy burden’s binding,
Is the goal upon a hill.We may think of life as something that is built up from
a dream;
We may hear old songs that call us where the shafts of
morning stream;
But the storms beyond are waiting for the raw, un-
conquered will,And though hearts and hopes are breaking
As we come to bitter waking,
Yet the only road worth taking
Is the road that leads uphill.Grantland Rice
“Just Be Glad” Poem by James Whitcomb Riley
Just Be Glad
O heart of mine, we shouldn’t Worry so!
What we’ve missed of calm we couldn’t Have, you know!
What we’ve met of stormy pain, And of sorrow’s driving rain, We can better meet again,
If it blow!
We have erred in that dark hour We have known,
When our tears fell with the shower, All alone!—
Were not shine and shower blent As the gracious Master meant?— Let us temper our content
With His own.
For, we know, not every morrow Can be sad;
So, forgetting all the sorrow We have had,
Let us fold away our fears,
And put by our foolish tears, And through all the coming years
Just be glad.
James Whitcomb Riley.
“Just One More Try” Poem by Robert W. Service on Grit
When you’re lost in the wild and you’re scared as a child, And death looks you bang in the eye;
And you’re sore as a boil, it’s according to Hoyle To cock your revolver and die.
But the code of a man says fight all you can, And self-dissolution is barred;
In hunger and woe, oh it’s easy to blow— It’s the hell served for breakfast that’s hard.
You’re sick of the game? Well now, that’s a shame! You’re young and you’re brave and you’re bright.
You’ve had a raw deal, I know, but don’t squeal. Buck up, do your damnedest and fight!
It’s the plugging away that will win you the day, So don’t be a piker, old pard;
Just draw on your grit; it’s so easy to quit— It’s the keeping your chin up that’s hard.
It’s easy to cry that you’re beaten and die, It’s easy to crawfish and crawl,
But to fight and to fight when hope’s out of sight, Why, that’s the best game of them all.
And though you come out of each grueling bout, All broken and beaten and scarred—
Just have one more try. It’s dead easy to die, It’s the keeping on living that’s hard.
Robert W. Service.
“Pied Beauty” Poem by Gerard Manely Hopkins
Pied Beauty
GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim:
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and
plough;
And àll tràdes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
“On the Grasshopper and Cricket” Poem by John Keats
On the Grasshopper and Cricket
The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead
In summer luxury,—he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.
“The Hope of Loving ~ Poem by Meister Eckhart
The Hope of Loving
What keeps us alive, what allows us to endure?
I think it is the hope of loving,
or being loved.
I heard a fable once about the sun going on a journey
to find its source, and how the moon wept
without her lover’s
warm gaze.
We weep when light does not reach our hearts. We wither
like fields if someone close
does not rain their
kindness
upon
us.
