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                   Pity the Nation 

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Whose sages are silenced
and whose bigots haunt the airways
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
but aims to rule the world
by force and by torture
And knows
No other language but its own
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed
Pity the nation Oh pity the people of my country
My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty! 

Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (1919 – 2021) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. Ferlinghetti was best known for his second collection of poems, A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), which has been translated into nine languages and sold over a million copies. He published his Poem " Pity the Nation in 2007 toward the end of Bob Bush second term to tell what he felt was wrong about the USA . It was also a response to Kahil Gibran’s 1933 poem Pity the Nation. Gibran’s poem was about Pakistan. Video of Ferlinghetti reading the poem

"Traveler, There Is No Road"

“Traveler, your footprints are
the road, and nothing more;
Traveler, there is no road,
the road is made as you walk.
By walking the road is made,
and as you look behind you
you see the trail that never
will be walked on again.
Traveler, there is no road,
only wakes on the sea.”

Antonio Machado - (1875 – 1939), Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation of 98. His work, initially modernist, evolved towards an intimate form of symbolism with romantic traits. He gradually developed a style characterized by both an engagement with humanity on one side and an almost Taoist contemplation of existence on the other, a synthesis that according to The Spanish poet and writer, Gerard Diego, was quoted to say , Machado "spoke in verse and lived in poetry." Machado is considered one of the best poets in the Spanish language of the 20th century. More  

  Original Spanish Version:
“Caminante, no hay camino"

“Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino, y nada más;
Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace el camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino
sino estelas en la mar.”

Translation credit: C. Loben (2022)

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

John Donne, (1572 - 1631), was a leading English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary of the Metaphysical school and dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. Donne is often considered the greatest love poet in the English language. He is also noted for his religious verse and treatises and for his sermons, which rank among the best of the 17th century. Donne was born of Roman Catholic parents when practice of that religion was illegal in England. His poetical works include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs and satires. He is also known for his sermons.

Source: Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII

                  Ghosts

    There are ghosts in the room.
As I sit here alone, from the dark corners there
They come out of the gloom,
And they stand at my side and they lean on my chair

    There’s a ghost of a Hope
That lighted my days with a fanciful glow,
In her hand is the rope
That strangled her life out. Hope was slain long ago.

    But her ghost comes to-night
With its skeleton face and expressionless eyes,
And it stands in the light,
And mocks me, and jeers me with sobs and with sighs.

    There’s the ghost of a Joy,
A frail, fragile thing, and I prized it too much,
And the hands that destroy
Clasped its close, and it died at the withering touch.

    There’s the ghost of a Love,
Born with joy, reared with hope, died in pain and unrest,
But he towers above
All the others—this ghost; yet a ghost at the best,

    I am weary, and fain
Would forget all these dead: but the gibbering host
Make my struggle in vain—
In each shadowy corner there lurketh a ghost.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (November 5, 1850 – October 30, 1919) was an American author and poet. Her works include Poems of Passion and Solitude, which contains the lines "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone." Her autobiography, "The Worlds and I", was published in 1918, a year before her death. Read more  

This poem is in the public domain

              The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Emma Lazarus (1849 – 1887) was an American author of poetry, prose, and translations. Her sonnet "The New Colossus" was inspired by the Statue of Liberty, in 1883. Its lines appear inscribed on a bronze plaque on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty installed in 1903. The last lines of the sonnet were set to music by Irving Berlin as the song "Give Me Your Tired, Your Your Poor. Lazarus was also the author of Poems and Translations (New York, 1867); Admetus, and other Poems (1871); Alide: An Episode of Goethe's Life (Philadelphia, 1874); Poems and Ballads of Heine and several others.

This poem, published in 1883,  is in the Public domain

   The Arrow and the Song

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.  

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet and educator . His works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was was one of the Fireside Poets from New England and the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. More

This poem is in the public domain

         Sufficient
Citron, pomegranate,
     Apricot, and peach,
  Flutter of apple-blows
     Whiter than the snow,
  Filling the silence
     With their leafy speech,
  Budding and blooming
     Down row after row.

Breaths of blown spices,
     Which the meadows yield,
  Blossoms broad-petaled,
     Starry buds and small;
  Gold of the hill-sides,
     Purple of the field,
  Waft to my nostrils
     Their fragrance, one and all.

Birds in the tree-tops,
     Birds that fill the air,
  Trilling, piping, singing,
     In their merry moods, —
  Gold wing and brown wing,
     Flitting here and here,
  To the coo and chirrup
     Of their downy broods.

What grace has summer
     Better that can suit?
  What gift can autumn
     Bring us more to please?
  Red of blown roses,
     Mellow tints of fruit,
  Never can be fairer,
     Sweeter than are these.

Ina Donna Coolbrith  (1841 – 1928) American poet, writer and librarian. She was the first California Poet Laureate and the first poet laureate of any American state. Born Josephine Donna Smith, she was the niece of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She left the Mormon community as a child to enter her teens in Los Angeles, California, where she began to publish poetry. She later made her home in San Francisco, where she formed the "Golden Gate Trinity". with writers Bret Harte and Charles Warren Stoddard. Her poetry received positive notice from critics and established poets such as Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce and Alfred Lord Tennyson.
This poem is in the public domain.

The Things I Love

A butterfly dancing in the sunlight,
A bird singing to his mate,
The whispering pines,
The restless sea,
The gigantic mountains,
A stately tree,
The rain upon the roof,
The sun at early dawn,
A boy with rod and hook,
The babble of a shady brook,
A woman with her smiling babe,
A man whose eyes are kind and wise,
Youth that is eager and unafraid—
When all is said, I do love best
A little home where love abides,
And where there’s kindness, peace, and rest.

Scottie McKenzie Frasier (1884-1964) was an American teacher, poet, author, newspaper editor, lecturer, and socialite. She was born in Talladega, Alabama. She did newspaper work for four years in New York City and while there, she became a suffrage advocate and a member of the League of Women Voters She moved back to  to Dothan, Alabama where she went on to be a co-founder of the Dothan Equal Suffrage Association. Frasier's activities during World War I included being a Four Minute Speaker, a group of volunteers authorized by United States President Woodrow Wilson, to give four-minute speeches on topics given to them by the Committee on Public Information (CPI).

This poem is in the public domain.

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.

                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.

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