Public Posts

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

                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

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 

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”

What heart could have thought you?—
Past our devisal
(O filigree petal!)
Fashioned so purely,
Fragilely, surely,
From what Paradisal
Imagineless metal,
Too costly for cost?
Who hammered you, wrought you,
From argentine vapour?—
“God was my shaper.
Passing surmisal,
He hammered, He wrought me,
From curled silver vapour,
To lust of His mind;—
Thou could’st not have thought me!
So purely, so palely,
Tinily, surely,
Mightily, frailly,
Insculped and embossed,
With His hammer of wind,
And His graver of frost.”

Francis Joseph Thompson (1859 – 1907) was an English poet and Catholic mystic. He entered medical school at the age of 18, but at 26 left home to pursue his talent as a poet and writer and poet. He spent three years on the streets of London, supporting himself with menial labor. He become addicted to opium which he took to relieve a nervous problem. His first volume, "Poems" was published, in 1893. he began writing prose in 1897. His fragile health continued to deteriorate and he died of tuberculosis in 1907. 

This poem was published in 1897 and it is in the Public Domain.

George Santayana - (1863 – 1952) ~ Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, was a philosopher, essayist, poet, critic and novelist. Born in Spain and raised and educated in the US from the age of eight. He left his position at Harvard at the age of 48 and returned to Europe permanently. Santayana was the author of many books and is popularly known for his aphorisms. He was profoundly influenced by Spinoza's life and thought. Although he was an atheist, he treasured the Spanish Catholic values, practices, and worldview in which he was raised.

Quote source: –The Life of Reason: Reason in Society, Scribner

"She had blue skin,
And so did he.
He kept it hid
And so did she.
They searched for blue
Their whole life through,
Then passed right by—
And never knew."

Sheldon Allan “Shel” Silverstein (1930 - 1999) was an American poet, cartoonist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter, and children books author. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages and his books have sold over 20 million copies. Among his most memorable books are: "Where the Sidewalk Ends (1974), The Missing Piece (1976). After the 1970's, Silverstein continue releasing memorable children’s titles, among them A Light in the Attic (1981), and The Missing Piece Meets the Big O (1981).

“Masks”  tells the story of two wandering souls who never find each other because of their failure to show themselves as they truly were. Source: from Silverstein's book of poems called Everything On It. A collection of poems  published posthumously by Harper and Row Publishers in 2011.

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Public domain

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950) was an American lyrical poet and playwright. Millay was a renowned social figure and noted feminist in New York City during the Roaring Twenties and beyond. She wrote much of her prose and hackwork verse under the pseudonym Nancy Boyd. Millay won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her poem "Ballad of the Harp-Weaver"; she was the first woman and second person to win the award. In 1943, Millay was awarded the Frost Medal for her lifetime contribution to American poetry.

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Langston Hughes (1902 – 1967) American Poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, columnist. More