Poem of the day

Funny....but
not for me! ! ! !

It's funny how hello is always accompanied with goodbye
it's funny how good memories can start to make you cry
it's funny how forever never seems to last
it's funny how much you'd lose if you forgot about your past
it's funny how “friends” can just leave when you are down
it's funny how when you need someone they never are around
it's funny how people change and think they're so much better
it's funny how many lies are packed into one “love letter”
it's funny how one word can contain so much regret
it's funny how you can forgive but not forget
it's funny how ironic life turns out to be
but the funniest part of all, is none of thats funny to me

The Leaf and the Tree


When will you learn, myself, to be
a dying leaf on a living tree?
Budding, swelling, growing strong,
Wearing green, but not for long,
Drawing sustenance from air,
That other leaves, and you not there,
May bud, and at the autumn's call
Wearing russet, ready to fall?
Has not this trunk a deed to do
Unguessed by small and tremulous you?
Shall not these branches in the end
To wisdom and the truth ascend?
And the great lightning plunging by
Look sidewise with a golden eye
To glimpse a tree so tall and proud
It sheds its leaves upon a cloud?

Here, I think, is the heart's grief:
The tree, no mightier than the leaf,
Makes firm its root and spreads it crown
And stands; but in the end comes down.
That airy top no boy could climb
Is trodden in a little time
By cattle on their way to drink.
The fluttering thoughts a leaf can think,
That hears the wind and waits its turn,
Have taught it all a tree can learn.
Time can make soft that iron wood.
The tallest trunk that ever stood,
In time, without a dream to keep,
Crawls in beside the root to sleep.


Edna St Vincent Millay

I wandered lonly as a cloud

I wandered lonly as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffofils;
Besides the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze;

Continuous as the stars that shine,
And twinkle on the milky way
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay;
Then thousands saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
In such a jocund company!
I gazed_and gazed_ but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in a pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth

People in my life

Walking down the path of life,
A path often hard, uphill and difficult
I meet people who walk by my side
Some of them choose to touch me
Some of them I touch
Some of them hold my hand and walk with me
All of them scar me somehow

I've met mean people
Violent, angry people
People dark in the soul
People that look good on the outside
People funny and gracious on the surface
But void and empty on the inside
People who try to cover their defects but can't
Emotionally naive, eternally lonely, unhappy and troubled people.

I've met people who step on me to get taller
People who break me to feel better
People who hurt me and don't care
Weird, strange and unstable people
No sense in their behavior
People who take advantage of what I give them
People who expunge me from their life for good
Irrational people who I want to know better
People who promise won't treat me bad
but do so anyway without explanation
People who reject me abruptly
People careless about my feelings
Oblivious, confused and indifferent
People who jerk me around for a week
Playing with my vulnerable soul

Why, I ask, why is this happening?
Have normal people disappeared from this world?
Is it me who allows them to step all over me?
Is it my eagerness to meet someone normal
that makes me a magnet for such strange behavior?
Any normal people left out there?
Please come hold my hand
As life's ticking away and I can't hold out any longer
Come and I'll forget all I've been through
I'll be expecting you.

I like this love poem :A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns
O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June;
O my
Luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.

As
fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will
luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry:

Till a'
the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
I will
luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And
fare thee weel, my only Luve,
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I
will come again, my Luve,
Tho' it ware ten thousand mile.

Nature the gentlest mother

Nature, the gentlest mother,
Impatient of no child,
The feeblest or the waywardest,
Her admonition mild

In forest and the hill
By traveller is heard,
Restraining rampant squirrel
Or too impetuous bird.

How fair her conversation,
A summer afternoon,--
Her household, her assembly;
And when the sun goes down

Her voice among the aisles
Incites the timid prayer
Of the minutest cricket,
The most unworthy flower.

When all the children sleep
She turns as long away
As will suffice to light her lamps;
Then, bending from the sky

With infinite affection
And infiniter care,
Her golden finger on her lip,
Wills silence everywhere.

Emily Dickinson

Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

fire and ice by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

A Poison Tree by William Blake

I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I waterd it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole.
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see,
My foe outstretchd beneath the tree.

Birds of Passage

Black shadows fall
From the lindens tall,
That lift aloft their massive wall
Against the southern sky;

And from the realms
Of the shadowy elms
A tide-like darkness overwhelms
The fields that round us lie.

But the night is fair,
And everywhere
A warm, soft vapor fills the air,
And distant sounds seem near;

And above, in the light
Of the star-lit night,
Swift birds of passage wing their flight
Through the dewy atmosphere.

I hear the beat
Of their pinions fleet,
As from the land of snow and sleet
They seek a southern lea.

I hear the cry
Of their voices high
Falling dreamily through the sky,
But their forms I cannot see.

Oh, say not so!
Those sounds that flow
In murmurs of delight and woe
Come not from wings of birds.

They are the throngs
Of the poet's songs,
Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs,
The sound of winged words.

This is the cry
Of souls, that high
On toiling, beating pinions, fly,
Seeking a warmer clime.

From their distant flight
Through realms of light
It falls into our world of night,
With the murmuring sound of rhyme.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A wolf (y)howls when the moon is high,
His cries are carried across the sky.
When the sun is up he (a)goes to sleep,
When the sun is down he (c)begins to creep.
A flock of birds flies away,
And the wolf (i) on the mountain pursues his prey.(ne)




Beowulf *Mahmoud*

All the World's Stage

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

William Skakespeare

Nothing Gold Can Stay — by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

A Meeting With Despair

AS evening shaped I found me on a moor
Which sight could scarce sustain:
The black lean land, of featureless contour,
Was like a tract in pain.

"This scene, like my own life," I said, "is one
Where many glooms abide;
Toned by its fortune to a deadly dun--
Lightless on every side.

I glanced aloft and halted, pleasure-caught
To see the contrast there:
The ray-lit clouds gleamed glory; and I thought,
"There's solace everywhere!"

Then bitter self-reproaches as I stood
I dealt me silently
As one perverse--misrepresenting Good
In graceless mutiny.

Against the horizon's dim-descernèd wheel
A form rose, strange of mould:
That he was hideous, hopeless, I could feel
Rather than could behold.

"'Tis a dead spot, where even the light lies spent
To darkness!" croaked the Thing.
"Not if you look aloft!" said I, intent
On my new reasoning.

"Yea--but await awhile!" he cried. "Ho-ho!--
Look now aloft and see!"
I looked. There, too, sat night: Heaven's radiant show
Had gone. Then chuckled he.

Thomas Hardy

Wind by Ted Hughes


This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

Whisper in the Wind
Samantha C. Fifer


I hear it calling me,
In the middle of the night.
A whisper at my window,
Beckoning me to frolic,
In the cool summer breeze.

It blows gently through my hair,
As I dance across,
The soft green grass,
The wind tickles my feet,
When the breeze ruffles through the grass.

I dance to a pond where,
Every time I sit down,
At the murky water,
I can see my reflection,
By the moonlight dancing,
Across the water.

My reflection fades away,
When a willow branch whips,
At the water, and cast,
A ripple that continues,
Throughout the pond.

I lay here gazing up,
At the starry night,
Wondering how it can,
Be so beautiful.

And if it would last forever,
But then I realize that,
Not every thing lasts forever,
But comes once more,
After anther day,
Comes upon us.

The Gift by Sara Teasdale
What can I give you, my lord, my lover,
You who have given the world to me,
Showed me the light and the joy that cover
The wild sweet earth and the restless sea?

All that I have are gifts of your giving--
If I gave them again, you would find them old,
And your soul would weary of always living
Before the mirror my life would hold.

What shall I give you, my lord, my lover?
The gift that breaks the heart in me:
I bid you awake at dawn and discover
I have gone my way and left you free.

Walking Alone
by Michael Anderson
Alone

Edgar Allan Poe [1829]


From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were- I have not seen
As others saw- I could not bring
My passions from a common spring-
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow- I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone-
And all I lov'd- I lov'd alone-

Then- in my childhood- in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still-
From the torrent, or the fountain-
From the red cliff of the mountain-
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold-
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by-
From the thunder, and the storm-
And the cloud that took the form
(When all the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Walking Alone

Michael R. Anderson [1/90]


Response to: "Alone", by Edgar Allan Poe.

I, too, was born of a world not the same,
Amongst white snow, a raindrops' shame.
In life's garden, a dormant seed.
A heart held of dissimilar need.

I, too, was awed by lightning's flash,
Embering in mind even after the crash.
Followed closely by silent rain,
Blood-red, falling from the sky in vain.

The wind chimed and the earth shook from thunder,
And my mind was but befixed to wonder;
How could I stand amidst this storm,
Seek shelter not, yet still seem warm?

But I, too, take my sorrow at a site-
Other souls would nonchalantly slight.
And I, too, have felt the need for love,
But could only love that need which I dreamt of.

And as I peered deep through the skies,
The clouds grew black to shut my eyes.
The demon that came in your view,
Now's taken from me what he took from you.

In the garden the seed has sprang,
A nameless child unearths the pang.
Felt for the flower, both eyes in close.
Took twenty thorns to touch the rose.

A wondering mind looked to the sky,
So beautiful it had to die.
Laid it to rest upon the stone,
And turned away a man full grown.

Singing the same song at a different tone,
In thoughts, destined to die, unknown.
Born unto a world not of our own,
We walked together, walking alone.

Spirits Of The Dead


Thy soul shall find itself alone
'Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone;
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy.

Be silent in that solitude,
Which is not loneliness- for then
The spirits of the dead, who stood
In life before thee, are again
In death around thee, and their will
Shall overshadow thee; be still.

The night, though clear, shall frown,
And the stars shall not look down
From their high thrones in the Heaven
With light like hope to mortals given,
But their red orbs, without beam,
To thy weariness shall seem
As a burning and a fever
Which would cling to thee for ever.

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish,
Now are visions ne'er to vanish;
From thy spirit shall they pass
No more, like dew-drop from the grass.

The breeze, the breath of God, is still,
And the mist upon the hill
Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token.
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries!

Edgar Allan Poe

A Hunting Morning

Put the saddle on the mare,
For the wet winds blow;
There's winter in the air,
And autumn all below.
For the red leaves are flying
And the red bracken dying,
And the red fox lying
Where the oziers grow.

Put the bridle on the mare,
For my blood runs chill;
And my heart, it is there,
On the heather-tufted hill,
With the gray skies o'er us,
And the long-drawn chorus
Of a running pack before us
From the find to the kill.

Then lead round the mare,
For it's time that we began,
And away with thought and care,
Save to live and be a man,
While the keen air is blowing,
And the huntsman holloing,
And the black mare going
As the black mare can.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Dream-Land by Edgar Allan Poe (1844)

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule —
From a wild weird clime, that lieth, sublime,
Out of Space — out of Time.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titian woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the dews that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead, —
Their still waters, still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule.

By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead, —
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily, —
By the mountains — near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever, —
By the gray woods, — by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp, —
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls, —
By each spot the most unholy —
In each nook most melancholy, —
There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the Past —
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by —
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the worms, and Heaven.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule —

For the heart whose woes are legion
’T is a peaceful, soothing region —
For the spirit that walks in shadow
’T is — oh ’t is an Eldorado!
But the traveler, traveling through it,
May not — dare not openly view it;
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringéd lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.