What about a new project like the former one but now with pieces of poetry? Splendid! Fine!
h 1.
'Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done:
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.'
Shakespeare
I like to start with Shakespeare, what a man indeed!
Lust without Love is a horrible thing.
n 1.
There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons -
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes -
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us -
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are -
None may teach it - Any -
'Tis the Seal Despair -
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air -
When it comes, the Landscape listens -
Shadows - hold their breath -
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death -
Emily DickinsonSo deep and dark, I like her poetry a lot. I find it difficult to know the meaning of poetry, like most things. I'm never sure if I interpret things the way they are meant to be interpreted. To me this is the darkness of the changing into winter. She compares many things to death, so it could probably mean other, more intellectual things. I like the way it sounds. I like the way the words fit together.
h 2.
Nice words and description. It sounds from a different world.
When you plunged
The light of Tuscany wavered
And swung through the pool
From top to bottom.
I loved your wet head and smashing crawl,
Surfacing and surfacing again
This year and every year since.
I sat dry-throated on the warm stones.
You were beyond me.
The mellowed clarities, the grape-deep air
Thinned and disappointed.
Thank God for the slow loadening,
When I hold you now
We are close and deep
As the atmosphere on water.
My two hands are plumbed water.
You are my palpable, lithe
Otter of memory
In the pool of the moment,
Turning to swim on your back,
Each silent, thigh-shaking kick
Retilting the light,
Heaving the cool at your neck.
And suddenly you're out.
Back again, intent as ever,
Heavy and frisky in your freshened pelt,
Printing the stones.
Seamus Heaney
This poem is special to me because I saw Seamus Heaney recite it himself. I had never seen anyone recite poetry formally before, and it was a memorable experience. Hearing a poet recite his own words was very moving.
h 3.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee? -
With silence and tears.
ByronIn a few words I find a lot of drama, wonderful.
n 3.
Though earth and moon were gone
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And thou were left alone,
Every Existence would exist in thee,
There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void,
Since thou art Being and Breath,
And what thou art may never be destroyed.
Emily Brontë
I can just imagine sitting in a great house, in the library surrounded by hundreds of books to choose from, with the weather outside stormy, and a fireplace lit close by...reading this. Takes me back to what it must have been like when it was written.
h 4.
Women and Roses.
I dream of a red-rose tree.
And which of its roses three
Is the dearest rose to me?
...
Dear rose, thy joy's undimmed,
Thy cup is ruby rimmed,
Thy cup's heart nectar-brimmed.
...
Dear rose without a thorn,
Thy bud's the babe unborn:
First streak of a new morn.
Robert Browning This is a large poem from which I extracted the honey.
n 4.
from Hamlet
Doubt that the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
Shakespeare
Shakespeare should be on everyone's list. This is mine, simple enough.
h 5.
Life is too short
Life it too short for any vain regretting;
Let dead delight bury its dead, I say,
And let us go upon our way forgetting
The joys, and sorrows, of each yesterday.
Between the swift sun's rising and its setting,
We have no time for useless tears or fretting,
Life is too short.
Life is too short for any bitter feeling;
Time is the best avenger if we wait,
The years speed by, and on their wings bear healing,
We have no room for anything like hate.
This solemn truth the low mounds seem revealing
That thick and fast about our feet are stealing,
Life is too short.
Life is too short for aught but high endeavour, -
Too short for spite, but long enough for love.
And love lives on forever and forever,
It links the worlds that circle on above:
'Tis God's first law, the universe's lever.
In His vast realm the radiant souls sigh never -
"Life is too short."
Ella Wheeler WilcoxThis poem has certainly some message in it.
n 5.
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Christina Rossetti
It amazes me how much emotion can be brought out through words, such a talent to be able to put them together and become something so powerful.
h 6.
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 sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
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 gives life to thee.
Shakespeare'Thy eternal summer shall not fade..' convincing, beautiful, powerful, when you read it it is true..
n 6.
The lilacs lift in generous bloom
Their plumes of dear old-fashioned flowers;
Their fragrance fills the still old house
Where left alone I count the hours.
High in the apple-trees the bees
Are humming, busy in the sun, -
An idle robin cries for rain
But once or twice and then is done.
The Sunday-morning quiet holds
In heavy-slumber all the street,
While from the church, just out of sight
Behind the elms, comes slow and sweet
The organ's drone, the voices faint
That sing the quaint long-meter hymn -
I somehow feel as if shut out
From some mysterious temple, dim
And beautiful with blue and red
And golden lights from windows high,
Where angels in the shadows stand
And earth seems very near the sky.
The day-dream fades - and so I try
Again to catch the tune that brings
No thought of temple nor of priest,
But only of a voice that sings.
Sarah Orne Jewett
This really brings the senses to life, close your eyes and you are there.
h 7.
The Self-Unseeing
Here is the ancient floor,
Footworn and hollowed and thin,
Here was the former door
Where the dead feet walked in.
She sat here in her chair,
Smiling into the fire;
He who played stood there,
Bowing it higher and higher.
Childlike, I danced in a dream;
Blessings emblazoned that day;
Everything glowed with a gleam;
Yet we were looking away!
Thomas Hardy
Clear to me.
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand are stare.
W. H. Davies
Very nice. Someone once gave me a card with the first line of this poem on it.
from 'Love Song'
everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws one voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.
R.M. Rilke (translated by S. Mitchell)I like the thoughts, although the translation is a bit awkward.
The Everlasting Monday
Thou shalt have an everlasting
Monday and stand in the moon.
The moon's man stands in his shell,
Bent under a bundle
Of sticks. The light falls chalk and cold
Upon our bedspread.
His teeth are chattering among the leprous
Peaks and craters of those extinct volcanoes.
He also against black frost
Would pick sticks, would not rest
Until his own lit room outshone
Sunday's ghost of sun;
Now works his hell of Mondays in the moon's ball,
Fireless, seven chill seas chained to his ankle.
Sylvia Plath
I like the title of this poem. I find her work very deep, something to think hard about.
Victory in Defeat
Defeat may serve as well as victory
To shake the soul and let the glory out.
When the great oak is straining in the wind,
The boughs drink in new beauty and the trunk
Sends down a deeper root on the windward side.
Only the soul that knows the mighty grief
Can know the mighty rapture. Sorrows come
To stretch out spaces in the heart for joy.
Edwin Markham If we have Defeat under control we are able to walk further. This theatrical poem appeal to me, it is the right form for a huge problem. But when we have read about 'shake the soul' and 'mighty grief' we are able to receive the 'mighty rapture' and we like to long for that.
Even Such Is Time
Even such is time that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust,
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.
Sir Walter RaleghAgain, such simple words, but written together, they mean so much.
Pieces by Henry Vaughan
'I saw eternity the other night
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years,
Driven by the spheres,'
- - - - - - -
It was a bank of flowers, where I descried,
Though 'twas midday,
Some fast asleep, others broad-eyed
And taking in the ray;
Here, musing long, I heard
A rushing wind
Which still increased, but whence it stirred
No where I could not find.
- - - - - - -
I have one Pearl, by whose light
All things I see,
And in the heart of earth and night,
Find heaven and thee.
- - - - - - -
How rich, O Lord! how fresh thy visits are!
- - - - - - -
It seems a strange reality, yet it is common for him. He found the right words for his experience or imagination.
I like our collection! It has become a nice area where you can enjoy greatly.
A Friend is someone who has the gift Of always giving your heart a lift, Who listens and understands and cares And has a cheerful thought to share, Whose presence brightens up the day, Who does nice things in the warmest way... Of all the pleasures life can send, One of the finest is having a friend! Jessica St. James
I thought it fitting to end the Poetry collection with a poem about friends.