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To the living, I am gone.
To the sorrowful, I will never return.
To the angry, I was cheated 
But to the happy, I am at peace
And to the faithful, I have never left...

...For if you always think of me, I will never be gone. Read the full poem

             Spring Night

The park is filled with night and fog,
The veils are drawn about the world,
The drowsy lights along the paths
Are dim and pearled.

Gold and gleaming the empty streets,
Gold and gleaming the misty lake,
The mirrored lights light sunken swords,
Glimmer and shake.

Oh, is it not enough to be
Here with this beauty over me?
My throat should ache with praise, and I
Should kneel in joy beneath the sky.
Oh, beauty, are you not enough?

Why am I crying after love
With youth, a singing voice and eyes
To take earth’s wonder with surprise?
Why have I put off my pride,
Why am I unsatisfied,

I for whom the pensive night
Binds her cloudy hair with light,
I for whom all beauty burns
Like incense in a million urns?
Oh, beauty, are you not enough?
Why am I crying after love?

Sara Teasdale (1884 – 1933) was an American lyric poet. She was born Sarah Trevor Teasdale in St. Louis, Missouri, and used the name Sara Teasdale Filsinger after her marriage in 1914. She is the author of many poetry collections and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her "Love Songs"  Read more  

This poem is in the public domain.

"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved. Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.”

                Easter

Let all the flowers wake to life;
Let all the songsters sing;
Let everything that lives on earth
Become a joyous thing.

Wake up, thou pansy, purple-eyed,
And greet the dewy spring;
Swell out, ye buds, and o’er the earth
Thy sweetest fragrance fling.

Why dost thou sleep, sweet violet?
The earth has need of thee;
Wake up and catch the melody
That sounds from sea to sea.

Ye stars, that dwell in noonday skies,
Shine on, though all unseen;
The great White Throne lies just beyond,
The stars are all between.

Ring out, ye bells, sweet Easter bells,
And ring the glory in;
Ring out the sorrow, born of earth—
Ring out the stains of sin.

O banners wide, that sweep the sky,
Unfurl ye to the sun;
And gently wave about the graves
Of those whose lives are done.

Let peace be in the hearts that mourn—
Let “Rest” be in the grave;
The Hand that swept these lives away
Hath power alone to save.

Ring out, ye bells, sweet Easter bells,
And ring the glory in;
Ring out the sorrow, born of earth—
Ring out the stains of sin.

Fannie Isabelle Sherrick Wardell -  American poet, essayist, and columnist, whose work flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Not much is known about her early life, but her poetry was well-regarded and she became known for her romantic verses. She published 46 romantic and philosophical poetry in several volumes. She was Influenced by her contemporary of Ella Wheeler Wilcox. She was a native of St. Louis and worked as a teacher. She was a descendant of Moses Cleaveland the founder and namesake of Cleveland, Ohio.

“When you hate, you generate a reciprocal hate. When individuals hate each other, the harm is finite; but when great groups of nations hate each other, the harm may be infinite and absolute. Do not fall back upon the thought that those whom you hate deserve to be hated. I do not know whether anybody deserves to be hated, but I do know that hatred of those whom we believe to be evil is not what will redeem mankind.”

Source: Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics, Part I. Ethics, Ch. VI: Scientific Technique and the Future, p. 271

"Pastel-colored apparitions of tenderness, magnolias are titans of resilience. They have been consecrating Earth with their beauty since the time dinosaurs roamed it, long before bees evolved to give our planet its colors, pioneering the exquisitely orchestrated pollination strategies by which perfect flowers survive". Read more at the Marginalian

BUT WE HAD MUSIC

Right this minute
across time zones and opinions
people are
making plans
making meals
making promises and poems

while

at the center of our galaxy
a black hole with the mass of
four billion suns
screams its open-mouth kiss
of oblivion.

Someday it will swallow
Euclid’s postulates and the Goldberg Variations,
swallow calculus and Leaves of Grass.

I know this.

And still
when the constellation of starlings
flickers across the evening sky,
it is enough

to stand here
for an irrevocable minute
agape with wonder.

It is eternity.

By Maria Popova Read more at the Marginalian

                Spring
With a difference —Hamlet.

Again the bloom, the northward flight,
The fount freed at its silver height,
And down the deep woods to the lowest,
The fragrant shadows scarred with light.

O inescapable joy of spring!
For thee the world shall leap and sing;
But by her darkened door thou goest
Forever as a spectral thing.

Louise Imogen Guiney (1861–1920) - American poet, essayist, editor, literary critic and biographer. Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts. She was a contributor to The Atlantic Monthly, Scribner's Magazine, McClure's, Blackwood's Magazine, Dublin Review, The Catholic World, and the Catholic Encyclopedia. There are twenty books published of her poetry and prose, including   Letters (1926, letters) and Recusant Poets, (1939, ed., with Geoffrey Bliss) which were published posthumously.

This poem is in the public domain

Carl Edward Sagan (1934 – 1996) ~ American astronomer, planetary scientist and science communicator. He was one of the most well-known scientist of the 1970's and 1980's . He was controversial in scientific, political, and religious circles for his views on extraterrestrial intelligence, nuclear weapons, and religion. His best known scientific contribution is his research on the possibility of extraterrestrial life. He was an advocate for nuclear disarmament and co-wrote and hosted 'Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.'  He was widely regarded as a freethinker and one of his most famous quotations, in Cosmos, was, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. 

At the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly
To the lone vale we loved, when life shone warm in thine eye;
And I think oft, if spirits can steal from the regions of air,
To revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to me there,
And tell me our love is remembered, even in the sky.

Then I sing the wild song ’twas once such pleasure to hear!
When our voices commingling breathed, like one, on the ear;
And, as Echo far off through the vale my sad orison rolls,
I think, oh my love! ’tis thy voice from the Kingdom of Souls,
Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear. 

Thomas Moore (1779 – 1852), was an Irish writer, poet, and lyricist, born in Dublin. He is celebrated for his Irish Melodies. His setting of English-language verse to old Irish tunes marked the transition in popular Irish culture from Irish to English. The poem, about the memory of a lost love. was published in 1813 in Irish Melodies and later in 1903, in Poetry of Thomas Moore - Macmillan and Co. This poem is now in the public domain. More 

Haruki Murakami is a Japanese writer born in Kyoto in 1949. Since childhood, Murakami has been heavily influenced by Western culture. As of 2024,  Murakami has written a series of 34 books. His books and stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally.his work translated into 50 languages and sold millions of copies outside Japan. His first novel, "Hear the Wind Sing" was published in 1979, followed by Norwegian Wood in 1987 which cemented increased his popularity. Kafka on the shore was published in 2005. He has received numerous awards for his work. More

For a glance, a world;
for a smile, a heaven;
for a kiss...., I don't know
what I would give you for a kiss!

Original Spanish version:
Por una mirada, un mundo;
por una sonrisa, un cielo;
por un beso… ¡yo no sé
qué te diera por un beso

Translation by Calob - All copy rights reserved - 2023

Gustavo Adolfo Claudio Domínguez Bastida . -- better known as Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836 – 1870), was a Spanish poet and writer (mostly short stories), also a playwright, literary columnist, and talented in drawing. Born in seville, He is now considered by some as one of the most important figures in Spanish literature, and possibly the most read author after Miguel de Cervantes. He adopted the alias of Bécquer as his brother Valeriano Bécquer, a painter, had done earlier. This poem was published posthumously in 1871 in “Rhymes”