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! 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
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?
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
A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
‘A Man Said to the Universe’
Stephen Crane
Go on, old chap. Laugh all you want!
The winds of change are surely blowing over the Old Continent. “Carol Ann Duffy (…) is the first woman, the first Scot and the first openly lesbian person to hold the position, as well as the first laureate to be chosen in the 21st century.” [Extracted from wikipedia.] The poem that entitles this post is this:
Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.
This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.
La lala la. See? I close my eyes
and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you
and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.
‘Words, Wide Night’
Carol Ann Duffy
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
"There Will Come Soft Rains"
Sara Teasdale
