Category: Poetry

The World is Too Much with Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Cold Mountain

A Buddhist monk named Han Shan got tired of life in the monastery and moved off to the wilderness. He wrote verses on rocks and trees to express his thoughts about life – these were collected and assembled in a text called Cold Mountain.

 

The clear water sparkles like crystal,
you can see through it easily, right to the bottom.
My mind is free from every thought,
nothing in the myriad realms can move it.

Since it cannot be wantonly roused,
forever and forever it will stay unchanged.
When you have learned to know in this way,
you’ll know there is no inside or out.

 

Talking about food won’t make you full,
babbling of clothes won’t keep out the cold.
A bowl of rice is what fills the belly;
it takes a suit of clothing to make you warm.

And yet, without stopping to consider this,
you complain that Buddha is hard to find.
Turn your mind within! There he is!
Why look for him outside?

 

High, high from the summit of the peak,
whatever way I look, no limit in sight!
No one knows I am sitting here alone.
A solitary moon shines in the cold spring.

Here in the spring – this is not the moon.
The moon is where it always is – in the sky above.
And though I sing this one little song,
in the song there is no Zen.

 

Have I a body or have I none?
Am I who I am or am I not?
Pondering these questions,
I sit leaning against the cliff while the years go by,

till the green grass grows between my feet
and the red dust settles on my head,
and the men of the world, thinking me dead,
come with offerings of wine and fruit to lay by my corpse.

 

Yes, there are stingy people,
but I’m not one of the stingy kind.
The robe I wear is flimsy? The better to dance in.
Wine gone? It went with a toast and a song.

Just so you keep your belly full –
never let those two legs go weary.
When the weeds are poking through your skull,
That’s the day you’ll have regrets!

 

Today I sat before the cliff,
sat a long time till mists had cleared.
A single thread, the clear stream runs cold;
a thousand yards the green peaks lift their heads.

White clouds – the morning light is still.
Moonrise – the lamp of night drifts upward.
Body free from dust and stain,
What cares could trouble my mind?

 

Emily Dickinson

Much Madness is divinest Sense –
To a discerning Eye –
Much Sense – the starkest Madness –

‘Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail –

Assent – and you are sane –
Demur – you’re straightway dangerous –
And handled with a Chain –

 

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – Too?
Then there’s a pair of us?
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

 

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.

Sylvia Plath

Biography
Take Me to the Edge

Out here there are no hearthstones,
Hot grains, simply. It is dry, dry.
And the air dangerous. Noonday acts queerly
On the mind’s eye, erecting a line
Of poplars in the middle distance, the only
Object beside the mad, straight road
One can remember men and houses by.
A cool wind should inhabit those leaves
And a dew collect on them, dearer than money,
In the blue hour before sunup.
Yet they recede, untouchable as tomorrow,
Or those glittery fictions of spilt water
That glide ahead of the very thirsty.

I think of the lizards airing their tongues
In the crevice of an extremely small shadow
And the toad guarding his heart’s droplet.
The desert is white as a blind man’s eye,
Comfortless as salt. Snake and bird
Doze behind the old masks of fury.
We swelter like firedogs in the wind.
The sun puts its cinder out. Where we lie
The heat-cracked crickets congregate
In their black armorplate and cry.
The day-moon lights up like a sorry mother,
And the crickets come creeping into our hair
To fiddle the short night away.

Rumi

Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, commonly known as Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a Sufi mystic, poet, and founder of the Islamic brotherhood known as the Mevlevi Order. Rumi is an influential figure in Sufism, and his thought and works loom large both in Persian literature and mystic poetry in general. Today, his translated works are enjoyed all over the world.

 

Travelers, it is late.
Life’s sun is going to set.
During these brief days that you have strength,
be quick and spare no effort of your wings.

 

All day and night, music,
a quiet, bright
reedsong. If it
fades, we fade.

 

Pale sunlight,
pale the wall.

Love moves away.
The light changes.

I need more grace
than I thought.

 

Gamble everything for love,
if you’re a true human being.
If not, leave
this gathering.

Half-heartedness doesn’t reach
into majesty. You set out
to find God, but then you keep
stopping for long periods
at mean-spirited roadhouses.

 

In a boat down a fast-running creek,
it feels like trees on the bank
are rushing by. What seems
to be changing around us
is rather the speed of our craft
leaving this world.

 

Which is worth more, a crowd of thousands,
or your own genuine solitude?
Freedom, or power over an entire nation?
A little while alone in your room
will prove more valuable than anything else
that could ever be given you.

 

Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.

 

Emily Bronte

Often rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things that cannot be:

Today, I will seek not the shadowy region;
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And visions rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.

I’ll walk, but not in old heroic traces,
And not in paths of high morality,
And not among the half-distinguished faces,
The clouded forms of long-past history.

I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading:
It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the gray flocks in ferny glens are feeding;
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side.

What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?
More glory and more grief than I can tell:
The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling;
Can center both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.

 

When days of Beauty deck the earth
Or stormy nights descend
How well my spirit knows the path
On which it ought to wend

It seeks the consecrated spot
Beloved in childhood’s years
The space between is all forgot
Its suffering and its tears.

 

No coward soul is mine
No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere
I see Heaven’s glories shine
And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear
O God within my breast
Almighty ever-present Deity
Life, that in me hast rest,
As I Undying Life, have power in Thee
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men’s hearts, unutterably vain,
Worthless as withered weeds
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by thy infinity,
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of Immortality.
With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears
Though earth and moon were gone
And suns and universes ceased to be
And Thou wert 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.
All day I’ve toiled but not with pain
     In learning’s golden mine
And now at eventide again
     The moonbeams softly shine
There is no snow upon the ground
     No frost on wind or wave
The south wind blew with gentlest sound
     And broke their icy grave
Tis sweet to wander here at night
     To watch the winter die
With heart as summer sunshine light
     And warm as summer’s sky
O may I never lose the peace
     That lulls me gently now
Though time should change my youthful face
     And years should shade my brow
True to myself and true to all
     May I be healthful still
And turn away from passion’s call
     And curb my own wild will

I know not how it falls on me,
This summer evening hushed and lone;
Yet the faint wind comes soothingly
With something of an olden tone.

Forgive me if I’ve shunned so long
Your gentle greeting, earth and air!
But sorrow withers e’en the strong,
And who can fight against despair?