Eldorado

By Edgar Allan Poe

Gaily bedight,

   A gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow,

   Had journeyed long,

   Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.

   But he grew old—

   This knight so bold—

And o’er his heart a shadow—

   Fell as he found

   No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

   And, as his strength

   Failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow—

   ‘Shadow,’ said he,

   ‘Where can it be—

This land of Eldorado?’

   ‘Over the Mountains

   Of the Moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,

   Ride, boldly ride,’

   The shade replied,—

‘If you seek for Eldorado!’

Source: The Complete Poems and Stories of Edgar Allan Poe (1946) via the Poetry Foundation.

Images: Clive Hicks-Jenkins and James Russell

Riches I hold in light esteem; And Love I laugh to scorn;

“The Old Stoic.” by Emily Jane Brontë (1818-1848) was first published in Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, 1846.

Riches I hold in light esteem;
And Love I laugh to scorn;
And lust of fame was but a dream
That vanished with the morn:

And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is, ” Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty !”

Yes, as my swift days near their goal,
‘Tis all that I implore;
In life and death, a chainless soul,
With courage to endure.

Photo by Thuanny Gantuss from Pexels

Contrasts: The Clod and the Pebble

See the contrasts in the poem The Clod and the Pebble By William Blake

“Love seeketh not itself to please,

Nor for itself hath any care,

But for another gives its ease,

And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.”

So sung a little Clod of Clay

Trodden with the cattle’s feet,

But a Pebble of the brook

Warbled out these metres meet:

“Love seeketh only self to please,

To bind another to its delight,

Joys in another’s loss of ease,

And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.”

Source: Poetry Foundation

Photo by James Wheeler from Pexels

The Tides Run Up the Wairau

Eileen Duggan’s poem, The Tides Run Up the Wairau expresses the duality of our most passionate feelings. 

The tides run up the Wairau
That fights against their flow,
My heart and it together
Are running salt and snow.
For though I cannot love you
Yet, heavy, deep and far,
Your tide of love comes swinging,
Too swift for me to bar.
Some thought of you must linger
A salt of pain in me,
For, oh, what running river
Can stand against the sea.
And then there is this about a bird:
For he broke off, forgetting all,
And sang four pure, plain notes, a call
That startled him as well as me,
It was such aimless ecstacy;
Unwary even in a bird,
A joy too naked to be heard.

Source: The New Zealand Railways Magazine, July 1938

Poem: I Am a Parcel of Vain Strivings…

+A poem by Henry David Thoreau

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied

By a chance bond together,

Dangling this way and that, their links

Were made so loose and wide,

Methinks,

For milder weather.

Here’s the full text for your enjoyment:

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied

By a chance bond together,

Dangling this way and that, their links

Were made so loose and wide,

Methinks,

For milder weather.

A bunch of violets without their roots,

And sorrel intermixed,

Encircled by a wisp of straw

Once coiled about their shoots,

The law

By which I’m fixed.

A nosegay which Time clutched from out

Those fair Elysian fields,

With weeds and broken stems, in haste,

Doth make the rabble rout

That waste

The day he yields.

And here I bloom for a short hour unseen,

Drinking my juices up,

With no root in the land

To keep my branches green,

But stand

In a bare cup.

Some tender buds were left upon my stem

In mimicry of life,

But ah! the children will not know,

Till time has withered them,

The woe

With which they’re rife.

But now I see I was not plucked for naught,

And after in life’s vase

Of glass set while I might survive,

But by a kind hand brought

Alive

To a strange place.

That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours,

And by another year,

Such as God knows, with freer air,

More fruits and fairer flowers

Will bear,

While I droop here.

Source: Poetry Foundation

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

I also love a quiet place… That’s green, away from all mankind…

I was walking this morning and I saw a kingfisher. As usual, when I spot a kingfisher these lines come to mind:

Nay, lovely Bird, thou art not vain;
Thou hast no proud, ambitious mind;

I also love a quiet place
That’s green, away from all mankind;
A lonely pool, and let a tree
Sigh with her bosom over me.

It is indeed strange how these lines have stayed with me and resonate just as much at 50 as they did when I was 15. This is one of my favourite poems.

The Kingfisher by William Henry Davies

It was the Rainbow gave thee birth,
And left thee all her lovely hues;
And, as her mother’s name was Tears,
So runs it in my blood to choose
For haunts the lonely pools, and keep
In company with trees that weep.
Go you and, with such glorious hues,
Live with proud peacocks in green parks;
On lawns as smooth as shining glass,
Let every feather show its marks;
Get thee on boughs and clap thy wings
Before the windows of proud kings.
Nay, lovely Bird, thou art not vain;
Thou hast no proud, ambitious mind;
I also love a quiet place
That’s green, away from all mankind;
A lonely pool, and let a tree
Sigh with her bosom over me.

Source: famouspoetsandpoems.com

Photo by Andrew Mckie from Pexels

 

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If you can watch the things you gave your life to, broken…

YOU’LL BE A WINNER…if you can rise after each fall…
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If you have a strong purpose in life…

If you have a strong purpose in life, you don’t have to be pushed. Your passion will drive you there. ~Roy D Bennett
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Be like the flower…

Be like the flower, turn your faces to the sun.~Khalil Gibran
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