Tag: poet

Worth While ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Worth While

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

It is easy enough to be pleasant
   When life flows by like a song,
But the man worth while is the one who will smile
   When everything goes dead wrong.
For the test of the heart is trouble,
   And it always comes with the years,
And the smile that is worth the praises of earth
   Is the smile that shines through tears.
It is easy enough to be prudent
   When nothing tempts you to stray,
When without or within no voice of sin
   Is luring your soul away;
But it’s only a negative virtue
   Until it is tried by fire,
And the life that is worth the honour on earth
   Is the one that resists desire.
p. 2By the cynic, the sad, the fallen,
   Who had no strength for the strife,
The world’s highway is cumbered to-day—
   They make up the sum of life;
But the virtue that conquers passion,
   And the sorrow that hides in a smile—
It is these that are worth the homage on earth,
   For we find them but once in a while.
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Confidence ~ Sri Chinmoy

Confidence

Sri Chinmoy

Your confidence-heart need not be
The result of your yesterday’s success.
Your confidence-heart can easily be
The result of your implicit faith
In tomorrow’s most beautiful dawn.

The Human Seasons ~ John Keats

The Human Seasons 

John Keats

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 honied cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
     Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
     He furleth close; contented 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.

Tie Your Heart To Mine ~ Pablo Neruda

Tie Your Heart at Night to Mine 

Pablo Neruda

Tie your heart at night to mine, love,
and both will defeat the darkness
like twin drums beating in the forest
against the heavy wall of wet leaves.
Night crossing: black coal of dream
that cuts the thread of earthly orbs
with the punctuality of a headlong train
that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.
Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement,
to the grip on life that beats in your breast,
with the wings of a submerged swan,
So that our dream might reply
to the sky’s questioning stars

I ~ Tagore

I 

Tagore

I wonder if I know him
In whose speech is my voice,
In whose movement is my being,
Whose skill is in my lines,
Whose melody is in my songs
In joy and sorrow.
I thought he was chained within me,
Contained by tears and laughter,
Work and play.
I thought he was my very self
Coming to an end with my death.
Why then in a flood of joy do I feel him
In the sight and touch of my beloved?
This ‘I’ beyond self I found
On the shores of the shining sea.
Therefore I know
This’I’ is not imprisoned within my bounds.
Losing myself, I find him
Beyond the borders of time and space.
Through the Ages
I come to know his Shining Self
In the Iffe of the seeker,
In the voice of the poet.
From the dark clouds pour the rains.
I sit and think:
Bearing so many forms, so many names,
I come down, crossing the threshold
Of countless births and deaths.
The Supreme undivided, complete in himself,
Embracing past and present,
Dwells in Man.
Within Him I shall find myself –
The ‘I’ that reaches everywhere.

Hope ~ Czeslaw Milosz

Hope 

Czeslaw Milosz

Hope is with you when you believe
The earth is not a dream but living flesh,
that sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,
That all thing you have ever seen here
Are like a garden looked at from a gate.
You cannot enter. But you’re sure it’s there.
Could we but look more clearly and wisely
We might discover somewhere in the garden
A strange new flower and an unnamed star.
Some people say that we should not trust our eyes,
That there is nothing, just a seeming,
There are the ones who have no hope.
They think the moment we turn away,
The world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,
As if snatched up by the hand of thieves.

Pass ~ Edmund Vance Cooke

Pass
 

 Edmund Vance Cooke
 

 Did somebody give you a pat on the back?
 Pass it on!
 Let somebody else have a taste of the snack,
 Pass it on!
 If it heightens your courage, or lightens your pack,
 If it kisses your soul, with a song in the smack,
 Maybe somebody else has been dressing in black;
 Pass it on!
 God gives you a smile, not to make it a yawn;
 Pass it on!
 Did somebody show you a slanderous mess?
 Pass it by!
 When a brook's flowing by, will you drink at the cess?
 Pass it by!
 Dame Gossip's a wanton, whatever her dress;
 Her sire was a lie and her dam was a guess,
 And a poison is in her polluting caress;
 Pass it by!
 Unless you're a porker, keep out of the sty.
 Pass it by!
 Did somebody give you an insolent word?
 Pass it up!
 'T is the creak of a cricket, the pwit of a bird;
 Pass it up!
 Shake your fist at the sea! Is its majesty blurred?
 Blow your breath at the sky! Is its purity slurred?
 But the shallowest puddle, how easily stirred!
 Pass it up!
 Does the puddle invite you to dip in your cup?
 Pass it up!