On Time

Ever eating, never cloying,

All-devouring, all-destroying

Never finding full repast,

Till I eat the world at last.

"On Time"

Jonathan Swift

The Hourglass

 

Do but consider this small dust
Here running in the glass,
By atoms moved;
Could you believe that this
The body was
Of one that loved?
And in his mistress' flame, playing like a fly,
Turned to cinders by her eye?
Yes; and in death, as life, unblessed,
To have't expressed,
Even ashes of lovers find no rest.

“The Hourglass” 
Ben Jonson

The Gladness of Nature

 

Is this a time to be cloudy and sad,
When our mother Nature laughs around;
When even the deep blue heavens look glad,
And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground?

There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren,
And the gossip of swallows through all the sky;
The ground-squirrel gaily chirps by his den,
And the wilding bee hums merrily by.

The clouds are at play in the azure space,
And their shadows at play on the bright green vale,
And here they stretch to the frolic chase,
And there they roll on the easy gale.

There's a dance of leaves in that aspen bower,
There's a titter of winds in that beechen tree,
There's a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower,
And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea.

And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles
On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray,
On the leaping waters and gay young isles;
Ay, look, and he'll smile thy gloom away.

 

“The Gladness of Nature”  
William Cullen Bryant

The Way Through the Woods

 

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate.
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods...
But there is no road through the woods.

 

“The Way Through the Woods” 
Rudyard Kipling

On Death

I.

Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
The transient pleasures as a vision seem,
And yet we think the greatest pain's to die.

II.

How strange it is that man on earth should roam,
And lead a life of woe, but not forsake
His rugged path; nor dare he view alone
His future doom which is but to awake.

 

 

“On Death”
John Keats

Just Think!

 

Just think! some night the stars will gleam
      Upon a cold, grey stone,
And trace a name with silver beam,
      And lo! ’twill be your own.

That night is speeding on to greet
      Your epitaphic rhyme.
Your life is but a little beat
      Within the heart of Time.

A little gain, a little pain,
      A laugh, lest you may moan;
A little blame, a little fame,
      A star-gleam on a stone.

 

 

“Just Think!”
Robert William Service

Gratitude

I am not ungrateful for the things I received.
I thank them with all my heart.
I appreciate every one that passed on my life, no matter how brief the encounter was, is, or will be.

Sometimes I wish I could relive the past.
Not that I would change a thing.
I just wanted to try again the happiness I had and knew not it was there.

Relatives that are gone.
Friends that are lost.
I just wanted them to know that they really made the difference.

No matter how hard we try,
We simply cannot explain
How do we feel to those who we really love.

Or maybe it’s too easy,
We just have to say
‘Thank you’.

 

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I guess this is the way I found to thank you all. It’s not really a poem. I don’t have that gift. But it’s always nice to tell those whom you like how you feel about them, right?

The Great Minimum

 

It is something to have wept as we have wept,
It is something to have done as we have done,
It is something to have watched when all men slept,
And seen the stars which never see the sun.

It is something to have smelt the mystic rose,
Although it break and leave the thorny rods,
It is something to have hungered once as those
Must hunger who have ate the bread of gods.

To have seen you and your unforgotten face,
Brave as a blast of trumpets for the fray,
Pure as white lilies in a watery space,
It were something, though you went from me today.

To have known the things that from the weak are furled,
Perilous ancient passions, strange and high;
It is something to be wiser than the world,
It is something to be older than the sky.

In a time of sceptic moths and cynic rusts,
And fattened lives that of their sweetness tire
In a world of flying loves and fading lusts,
It is something to be sure of a desire.

Lo, blessed are our ears for they have heard;
Yea, blessed are our eyes for they have seen:
Let the thunder break on man and beast and bird
And the lightning. It is something to have been.

 

“The Great Minimum”
Gilbert Keith Chesterton