Sonnet LXXX: From Dawn to Noon
As the child knows not if his mother's face
Be fair; nor of his elders yet can deem
What each most is; but as of hill or stream
At dawn, all glimmering life surrounds his place:
Who yet, tow'rd noon of his half-weary race,
Pausing awhile beneath the high sun-beam
And gazing steadily back,—as through a dream,
In things long past new features now can trace:—
Even so the thought that is at length fullgrown
Turns back to note the sun-smit paths, all grey
And marvellous once, where first it walked alone;
And haply doubts, amid the unblenching day,
Which most or least impelled its onward way,—
Those unknown things or these things overknown.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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In The Way Back Then
Seven years ago,
I went back to Canada
after forty-two years.
I walked down a road
to show my wife where I used to live.
The road was built on rolling hills
and as I came over one,
I knew instantly where I was.
Things had changed
in those forty-two years,
some would say
it was unrecognisable
from what I used to know,
but as soon as I started down the hill
things came back like yesterday.
It was as if I had never been away.
Memories of my childhood
instantly sprang to mind.
I found myself seeing things
not as the now,
but there were changes
from the way back then.
The memory flashes
brought a smile to my face
as I could visualise
all the friends I knew then,
the funny incidents that over my life
in the way back then.
All too soon, time
has a way of taking things back
and my memory reclined them
to the back door of my mind.
30 April 2008
poem by David Harris
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Things Are Getting Better
Well I worked for a week and I got no pay.
(things getting better.)
Well my babys coming back home to stay
(things getting better.)
Well shes coming back home, but I havent got a dime
(things getting better.)
But Ive got my love to keep me fine[? ].
(things getting better.)
Oh-oh
Things getting better.
Things getting better.
Well since my babys been away,
(things getting better.)
Well things got worse from day to day.
(things getting better.)
Well now my babys come back to me.
(things getting better.)
Yeah, itll get better, wait and see.
(things getting better.)
Oh-oh
Things getting better.
Things getting better.
Oh-oh
Things getting better.
Things getting better.
Well I pawned my watch and I sold my car.
(things getting better.)
The money Ive got wouldnt get me far.
(things getting better.)
But I dont mind now that youve packed.
(things getting better.)
Its a fact, that
Things getting better.
Things getting better.
Oh-oh
Things getting better.
Things getting better.
song performed by by Kinks
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Sonnets XCIX: C: Newborn Death
I
To-day Death seems to me an infant child
Which her worn mother Life upon my knee
Has set to grow my friend and play with me;
If haply so my heart might be beguil'd
To find no terrors in a face so mild,—
If haply so my weary heart might be
Unto the newborn milky eyes of thee,
O Death, before resentment reconcil'd.
How long, O Death? And shall thy feet depart
Still a young child's with mine, or wilt thou stand
Fullgrown the helpful daughter of my heart,
What time with thee indeed I reach the strand
Of the pale wave which knows thee what thou art,
And drink it in the hollow of thy hand?
II
And thou, O Life, the lady of all bliss,
With whom, when our first heart beat full and fast,
I wandered till the haunts of men were pass'd,
And in fair places found all bowers amiss
Till only woods and waves might hear our kiss,
While to the winds all thought of Death we cast:—
Ah, Life! and must I have from thee at last
No smile to greet me and no babe but this?
Lo! Love, the child once ours; and Song, whose hair
Blew like a flame and blossomed like a wreath;
And Art, whose eyes were worlds by God found fair:
These o'er the book of Nature mixed their breath
With neck-twined arms, as oft we watched them there:
And did these die that thou mightst bear me Death?
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Sonnet: To an Absconded Child
Come back, come back, come back my little child;
The love we bear for you is always to true;
The world is bad; Thou art a Lamb so mild;
Come back, come back and start your life anew!
In anger, people may do foolish things;
The home’s the best one place on earth, you know;
Don’t o’er-react to problems life just brings;
Don’t feel ashamed or guilty anyhow.
Not one of us bears hatred towards you;
We love you much and cannot miss you long;
How can we eat or sleep or our work do?
Come back, come back come back, let’s sing a song.
Oh, without you, gone is our life’s sunshine;
Come back; don’t hesitate; things will be fine.
6-29-2001
poem by John Celes
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The Lure of Trees
I honour all trees well; but, best of all,
I love those scarred old veterans, proud and tall,
Gazing from eminences, kingly wise,
Across great sweeps of changing earth and skies;
Gazing with seeming scorn upon the race
Of midgets who despoil this forest place
The restless race of men who, with edged tools,
With fire, have come to serve the end of fools.
Well these patricians know their own high worth;
Well know their task in serving Mother Earth:
Beckoning rain-clouds sailing overhead
That earth may drink and living things be fed,
Clutching with myriad roots the precious soil
The sun or sudden flood else would despoil,
Bending to tempests, spreading to the sky,
Remote, untamed, unconquered till they die.
I know them in the rose light of the dawn,
Sharp-etched upon the hill-tops, boldly drawn
Against the light. I know them at high noon,
Their gleaming arms held up, as for the boon
Of life they offer thanks; know them at night
When, out against the moon's enriching light,
Some bold phalanger launches from their tops
And, like a falling leaf, swings down and drops.
And still come stupid men with axe and fire
Scattering death to serve some brief desire.
'More than our lives are forfeit,' says the tree,
'For as we go, so man's prosperity
Goes with us, till this once green, gracious hill
Shall thirst in vain, when you have wrought your fill.'
I love, I honour all those forest kings;
They are such wise, such proudly scornful things.
poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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Strangers in Time
I'll ever remember the day she left
In a storm, I was so unkind,
I'd hurled the dinner right over her head
At the wall, and it blew her mind!
‘That's it! ' she muttered, and grabbed her bag
Went sailing out of the door,
With never a backward glance at me
Or our lives, forever more!
I sat for a week, just waited, thinking
Soon she'll be coming home,
Sat in the dark and hated, loved,
Then thought I'd better atone,
So I took to the streets, her mother's house
But of her, there wasn't a trace,
I tried her sister and brother's homes
And they slammed the door in my face.
Louise had walked right out of my life
And she wouldn't be coming back,
My world collapsed in a fit of tears
But I had to accept the fact,
I walked unthinking into the road,
Was hit by the local bus,
I vaguely remember the ambulance bell
And waking up in a truss.
There was something odd in that hospital,
I couldn't quite pin it down,
The ward was the long, old-fashioned sort
In a seedy part of town,
I noticed the nurse's uniforms
Were odd, like they used to wear
Back in the fifties, as a kid
I'd had tonsillitis there.
There was more than plenty of time to think
And I went back through my life,
Went back to every decision I'd made
Right up to losing my wife,
If I'd just done this, or just said that
I'd have taken a different tack,
So many ways I'd mishandled things
With no chance of going back.
And there, behind each second of time
Was a choice that we'd have to make,
Two paths had always been open to us
What path did the other path take?
Could there be a parallel universe
Where the other half of me,
Had made those different decisions,
Was alive, but happy and free?
It took three months for my wounds to heal
Then I found myself in the street,
It wasn't the town I remembered, though,
It had changed, perceptively,
And I was feeling much younger
So much fitter than before,
A glimpse of my face in a mirror, caught
And shocked me to the core!
I went to the university
And there I saw Louise,
Just as I'd seen her years before
And she waved and smiled at me,
Or I thought she did, but she passed me by
Went up to another man,
Kissed him there in the quad, and then
Walked off with him, hand in hand.
I was back in a parallel universe
Before she'd become my wife,
And now I remembered, Andy Cole
Had caused me a lot of strife,
We'd both gone after the same Louise
In the end, she'd chosen me,
But not before he had done with her,
Walked off, and set her free.
I followed them at a distance to
The place where they shared a flat,
I noticed she wore a wedding ring
And I thought that that was that!
I'd come too late in this scheme of things
That had taken another line,
I walked by her, but she knew me not,
We were simply strangers in time.
Then suddenly I was back at home
And closing the old front door,
I could smell Louise's cooking, it
Was a dish I'd come to abhor,
I took my place at the table and
She handed me the plate,
I said, ‘It smells delicious, dear! '
I'm the master of my fate!
7 October 2012
poem by David Lewis Paget
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Dream Of The Unknown
I dream of mostly nothing,
A deep black emptiness in space of infinate time.
But there is no time, there is nothing.
I see nothing, I touch nothing.
Am I even here? Do I exist? Where am I?
I'm not anywhere, just darkness all around.
I don't hear anything at all. I don't smell anything.
What kind of dream is this? This dream of the unknown.
It is not a dream. I'm not here, I am nothing.
Dreams are filled with things beyond imagination,
Filled with good things and bad things, but not this.
I am not happy nor am I sad...But I am scared.
Why am I scared? There is nothing here.
I am trembling but I don't feel a thing.
I'm not here, I am nothing just like this darkness.
But I am in fear in this dream of the unknown.
If it's a dream at all. Am I dead? Is that my fear?
If I'm dead, where is the afterlife? Were they right?
I see nothing, I feel nothing, I am nothing.
Fear is the only thing I know in this dream.
But why? If nothing is wrong, why is everything dark?
Why can't I dream? Why am I nothing with nothing around?
No time, no feeling, no sense. Just nothing.
Lost in this forsaken world, this dream of the unknown.
Suddenly, I'm crying. I feel tears stream down my face.
I feel my heart racing. I hear myself choke back cries.
But everything is still dark, everything is still nothing.
I don't understand. What is happening to me?
My eyes open, I'm in my bed. Face buried in my pillow.
I am still crying, I am still scared...I don't know why.
poem by Adam McKim
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To my lost one (villanelle)
If you come from a unknown place
from where I am, as if thrown
into my life and we again meet face-to-face
it may be by God’s grace
and we may leave the paths well trodden and known.
If you come from a unknown place
wherever it may be, carrying just one suitcase
I will be happy to meet you, if you come alone
into my life and we again meet face-to-face
and if you want to, we can disappear without a trace
be on our own, without anyone.
If you come from a unknown place
and walk into my embrace,
my lost one, come without a chaperone
into my life and we again meet face-to-face
our pasts will be erased
and all unhappiness will be gone,
if you come from a unknown place
into my life and we again meet face-to-face.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Youth
In my life, been all the places
That I dreamed of since I was a kid
Bury the past, I'm getting on with
Things I never thought I'd get through
So now I know
I don't know anything
Except I notice that
You're still here
I don't want anything
Well that's a lie because
I want you here with me
I made mistakes, I've done some things
That I just wish I could go back and change
But now I'm here, and now I know that I
Can learn from those things that I've done
So now I know
I don't know anything
Except I notice that
You're still here
I don't want anything
Well that's a lie because
I want you here with me
Don't want it back
I like who I've become
I'm right on track
I'm feeling half as young
As I did when I was a kid
In my life, been all the places
That I dreamed of since I was a kid
I don't know anything
Except I notice that
You're still here
I don't want anything
Well that's a lie because
I want you here with me
So now I know
song performed by by Goldfinger
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Why Fades A Dream
WHY fades a dream?
An iridescent ray
Flecked in between the tryst
Of night and day.
Why fades a dream? —
Of consciousness the shade
Wrought out by lack of light and made
Upon life's stream.
Why fades a dream?
That thought may thrive,
So fades the fleshless dream;
Lest men should learn to trust
The things that seem.
So fades a dream,
That living thought may grow
And like a waxing star-beam glow
Upon life's stream —
So fades a dream.
poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar
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Hideaway
i dream back of the past, where the womb i stay, is nothing
but a place where i can be in a day.......
moving out is not but a dream that everybody is busy, looking
something that everybody couldn't see......
my thought is humble to think that, in the shelves i use to play is
but a womb's mother i usually think that it is easy to be free....
i always ask even if it takes lust, all the memory is gone, only
the bad things is fun....
all it seems, it is fine and everything is with me, knowing i made
it for that day, wandering for every joy would leads me to make
me happy.....
i have stand on my own, i know where i go, believing that i am a
little god, great as it could be, never i hold to the womb iam
fold.....
innocent as a child, all day long i wait to the mother breast i suck,
to the milk iam glad, leaving behind the pain i my hands
let the hideaway may come in my dreams i stand, may you always be
in my mother womb i stay..... for only in my mother's womb.... i
could be free
poem by Antonio Liao
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Isn't It A Pity
isn't it a pity
you don't know what i'm talking about yet
but i will tell you soon
it's a pity
isn't it a pity
isn't it a shame
yes, how we break each other's hearts
and cause each other pain
how we take each other's love
without thinking anymore
forgetting to give back
forgetting to remember
just forgetting and no thank you
isn't it a pity
some things take so long
but how do i explain
why not too many people can see
that we are all just the same
we're all guilty
because of all the tears
our eyes just can't hope to see
but i don't think it's applicable to me
the beauty that surrounds them
child, isn't it a pity
how we break each other's hearts
and cause each other pain
how we take each other's love
the most precious thing
without thinking anymore
forgetting to give back
forgetting to keep open our door
isn't it a pity
isn't it a pity
some things take so long
but how do i explain
isn't it a pity
why not too many people
can see we're all the same
because we cry so much
our eyes can't, can't hope to see
that's not quite true
the beauty that surrounds them
maybe that's why we cry
God, isn't it a pity
Lord knows it's a pity
mankind has been so programmed
that they don't care about nothin'
that has to do with care
c-a-r-e
how we take each other's love
the most precious thing
without thinking anymore
forgetting to give back
forgetting to keep open the door
but i understand some things take so long
but how do i explain
why not too many people
can see we're just the same
and because of all their tears
their eyes can't hope to see
the beauty that surrounds them
God, isn't it a pity
the beauty that surrounds them
it's a pity
we take each other's love
just take it for granted
without thinking anymore
we give each other pain
and we shut every door
we take each other's minds
and we're capable of take each other's souls
we do it every day
just to reach some financial goal
Lord, isn't it a pity, my God
isn't it a pity, my God
and so unnecessary
just a little time, a little care
a little note written in the air
just the little thank you
we just forget to give back
cause we're moving too fast
moving too fast
forgetting to give back
but some things take so long
and i cannot explain
the beauty that surrounds us
and we don't see it
we think things are just the same
we've been programmed that way
isn't it a pity
if you want to feel sorry
isn't it a pity
isn't it a pity
the beauty sets the beauty that surrounds us
because of all our tears
our eyes can't hope to see
maybe one day at least i'll see me
and just concentrate on givin', givin', givin', givin'
and till that day
mankind don't stand a chance
don't know nothin' about romance
everything is plastic
isn't it a pity
my God.
song performed by by Nina Simone
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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K.S.R. Dental College, Tiruchengode
The day I saw the campus first,
I fell in love with it;
The place looks neat and tidy kept;
The college seems quite fit!
I love the way the place is run,
And how the buses ply;
I love the way all things are done;
Children here do not cry!
I know my child will love this place;
She’ll make a doctor fine;
She’s sure to win this lovely race;
In limelight, she will shine!
I know I’ve found the place I sought;
I need not change my plan;
My child is in the dental slot!
Why should I worry, man?
Five years will fly off very fast,
Although it looks so long;
Let no one brood over the past;
Just sing a happy song.
Kudos to him whose fore-vision,
Had built this college great;
The student has all things within;
One need not reach the gate.
Oh, what a lovely dream come true!
A dentist earns a lot!
But one must toil, persevere too;
And use the wisdom got.
One’s college life is full of bliss;
Yet, one must slog somewhat;
May be, your home, awhile you miss;
‘Cheer up and learn! ’ so what?
Fondly dedicated to the Chairman, K.S.R. Group of Institutions,
Lion. Dr. K.S.Rangasamy MJF, Tiruchengode, Namakkal dist, TN.
Copyright by Dr John Celes 27-09-2010
poem by John Celes
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K.S.R. Dental College
The day I saw the campus first,
I fell in love with it;
The place looks neat and tidy kept;
The college seems quite fit!
I love the way the place is run,
And how the buses ply;
I love the way all things are done;
Children here do not cry!
I know my child will love this place;
She’ll make a doctor fine;
She’s sure to win this lovely race;
In limelight, she will shine!
I know I’ve found the place I sought;
I need not change my plan;
My child is in the dental slot!
Why should I worry, man?
Five years will fly off very fast,
Although it looks so long;
Let no one brood over the past;
Just sing a happy song.
Kudos to him whose fore-vision,
Had built this college great;
The student has all things within;
One need not reach the gate.
Oh, what a lovely dream come true!
A dentist earns a lot!
But one must toil, persevere too;
And use the wisdom got.
One’s college life is full of bliss;
Yet, one must slog somewhat;
May be, your home, awhile you miss;
‘Cheer up and learn! ’ so what?
Fondly dedicated to the Chairman, K.S.R. Group of Institutions,
Dr. Lion. K.S.Rangasamy MJF, Tiruchengode, Namakkal dist, TN.
Copyright by Dr John Celes 27-09-2010
poem by John Celes
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Would u go back in time
Would you go back and relive painful times?
Would you go back when times weren't in line?
The hurt and pain of death?
The happy time when you first got your pet?
Would you go back when nothing went together,
Nothing rhymed, and nothing was forever?
Going back in time would unbury hurtful things.
Going back in time would show your success was once a dream.
Would you go back to say 'Good-bye'?
Would you go back to say 'Hi'?
Do you believe by going back things would be better?
Do you think you can go back and destroy hurtful letters?
The past should be left in the past and sometimes forgotten,
and the future may become even more shocking.
poem by Heather Noble
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Names Upon a Stone: (Inscribed to G. L. Fagan, Esq.)
ACROSS bleak widths of broken sea
A fierce north-easter breaks,
And makes a thunder on the lea—
A whiteness of the lakes.
Here, while beyond the rainy stream
The wild winds sobbing blow,
I see the river of my dream
Four wasted years ago.
Narrara of the waterfalls,
The darling of the hills,
Whose home is under mountain walls
By many-luted rills!
Her bright green nooks and channels cool
I never more may see;
But, ah! the Past was beautiful—
The sights that used to be.
There was a rock-pool in a glen
Beyond Narrara’s sands;
The mountains shut it in from men
In flowerful fairy lands;
But once we found its dwelling-place—
The lovely and the lone—
And, in a dream, I stooped to trace
Our names upon a stone.
Above us, where the star-like moss
Shone on the wet, green wall
That spanned the straitened stream across,
We saw the waterfall—
A silver singer far away,
By folded hills and hoar;
Its voice is in the woods to-day—
A voice I hear no more.
I wonder if the leaves that screen
The rock-pool of the past
Are yet as soft and cool and green
As when we saw them last!
I wonder if that tender thing,
The moss, has overgrown
The letters by the limpid spring—
Our names upon the stone!
Across the face of scenes we know
There may have come a change—
The places seen four years ago
Perhaps would now look strange.
To you, indeed, they cannot be
What haply once they were:
A friend beloved by you and me
No more will greet us there.
Because I know the filial grief
That shrinks beneath the touch—
The noble love whose words are brief—
I will not say too much;
But often when the night-winds strike
Across the sighing rills,
I think of him whose life was like
The rock-pool’s in the hills.
A beauty like the light of song
Is in my dreams, that show
The grand old man who lived so long
As spotless as the snow.
A fitting garland for the dead
I cannot compass yet;
But many things he did and said
I never will forget.
In dells where once we used to rove
The slow, sad water grieves;
And ever comes from glimmering grove
The liturgy of leaves.
But time and toil have marked my face,
My heart has older grown
Since, in the woods, I stooped to trace
Our names upon the stone.
poem by Henry Kendall
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The Fisherman
ALTHOUGH I can see him still.
The freckled man who goes
To a grey place on a hill
In grey Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies,
It's long since I began
To call up to the eyes
This wise and simple man.
All day I'd looked in the face
What I had hoped 'twould be
To write for my own race
And the reality;
The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved,
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer,
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
The catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise
And great Art beaten down.
Maybe a twelvemonth since
Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,
Imagining a man,
And his sun-freckled face,
And grey Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place
Where stone is dark under froth,
And the down-turn of his wrist
When the flies drop in the stream;
A man who does not exist,
A man who is but a dream;
And cried, 'Before I am old
I shall have written him one
poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.'
poem by William Butler Yeats
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Expostulation and Reply
"Why, William, on that old grey stone,
Thus for the length of half a day,
Why, William, sit you thus alone,
And dream your time away?
"Where are your books?--that light bequeathed
To Beings else forlorn and blind!
Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed
From dead men to their kind.
"You look round on your Mother Earth,
As if she for no purpose bore you;
As if you were her first-born birth,
And none had lived before you!"
One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake,
When life was sweet, I knew not why,
To me my good friend Matthew spake,
And thus I made reply:
"The eye--it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will.
"Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.
"Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?
"--Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,
Conversing as I may,
I sit upon this old grey stone,
And dream my time away,"
poem by William Wordsworth
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Cold Comfort
Say, will it, when our hairs are grey,
And wintry suns half light the day,
Which cheering hope and strengthening trust
Have left, departed, turned to dust,
Say, will it soothe lone years to extract
From fitful shows with sense exact
Their sad residuum, small, of fact?
Will trembling nerves their solace find
In plain conclusions of the mind?
Or errant fancies fond, that still
To fretful motions prompt the will,
Repose upon effect and cause,
And action of unvarying laws,
And human life’s familiar doom,
And on the all-concluding tomb.
Or were it to our kind and race,
And our instructed selves, disgrace
To wander then once more in you,
Green fields, beneath the pleasant blue;
To dream as we were used to dream,
And let things be whate’er they seem?
O feeble shapes of beggars grey
That, tottering on the public way,
Die out in doting, dim decay,
Is it to you when all is past
Our would-be wisdom turns at last?
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Derelict
In younger days, of idleness grown sick,
On this low bank I saw, as in a dream,
The fingers of the leaning willows prick
Long dimples in the slow, reluctant stream.
Watching the pilgrim leaves forsake the stem,
Impatient of the dull familiar cove,
And idle down the tide, I longed like them,
Untrammelled, homeless, free of heart, to rove.
I mind me that of these I noted one
That at the bend a wayward eddy turned
And drifted back, its journey just begun,
The secret of the wider stream unlearned.
It seemed a poor reward for one so bold,
Checked at the start, and beaten back, to find
So stale a death. I did not know, of old,
What seemed so hard could be in truth so kind!
I little thought that on a larger stream
I, too, one day should drift away at will
Toward the distant reaches of my dream
From the safe shelter where I lived so still.
I little thought that I should one day grow
Weary of endless pictures filing past,
Of idle life and idler love, and so
Come gladly to some little cove at last.
Kind eddy that has caught me from the tide,
Of drifting weary, tempest-torn and tost,
To find, from the swift current turned aside,
The simpler things I thought that I had lost!
What have they brought me, all the wasted years,
The river’s turns that opened with a smile
And ended in the bitterness of tears?
Kind God! How little were they worth the while!
Yet, here and there, around the sudden bends,
The opening reaches held some sweet surprise:—
My arm has linked and lingered in a friend’s,
My eyes have seen love swim in lovely eyes!
I have kissed pleasure—walked alone with pain;
And, if to life I was apprentice made,
My years of toil have brought the toiler’s gain—
By life equipped, of life I know the trade!
I have made foes, and so can keep a friend;
Learned of a friend how gently foes may score;
Played fast and loose with love, and in the end
Lost it, and, losing, learned to love the more!
Seeking for gifts, I found ’t is joy to give,
Searching for truth, was taught to know a lie;
Pursuing death, I learned ’t is good to live,
In quest of life, I learned it safe to die!
What were it better that the past should be
Than like that leaf, turned helplessly aside,
That drifted back beneath its mother-tree,
And at its root to purer purpose died?
Another year yet other leaves there sprung,
Fed by the mould of which it formed a part,
That subtly heard, mayhap, that voiceless tongue
And laid its lesson silently to heart.
From soil of pride the plant of meekness grows,
From labor’s mine comes gold of sweet surcease;
By sorrow’s showers is fed contentment’s rose,
And passion’s vultures build the nest of peace:
So from past weakness future strength I gain,
As poise of knowledge to my doubt succeeds,
And faith’s fresh flower, that long I sought in vain,
Blooms on the rubbish of my mouldered creeds.
Now at the end I see that it was well
To drain the cup down to the bitter lees;
To foretaste heaven—thread the paths of hell,
Else empty words and meaningless were these:
Else might I stand, as once I stood outside
My fast-locked heart, its best and worst unknown,
Till life’s firm hand flung the barred portals wide
And led me in, a stranger, to my own!
poem by Guy Wetmore Carryl from The Garden of Years and Other Poems (1900)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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