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My Heart Has Known Its Winter

A little while spring will claim its own,
In all the land around for mile on mile
Tender grass will hide the rugged stone.
My still heart will sing a little while.

And men will never think this wilderness
Was barren once when grass is over all,
Hearing laughter they may never guess
My heart has known its winter and carried gall.

This poem is in the public domain

Arna Bontemps (1902-1973)  Poet, writer, teacher, novelist. Born in Alexandria, Louisiana, the son of Creole parents. Bontemps published his first poem, "Hope" In 1924, which was followed by other poems, children's books and fiction writings; including "God Sends Sunday" (1931) and "You Can't Pet a Possum" (1934). He  published his novel "Black Thunder" in 1936  which is considered by some as his best work. Followed by the children's book "Sad-Faced Boy" (1937), and his novel, "Drums at Dusk" (1939). This book was more widely recognized than his other novels.

"All the stream that's roaring by
Came out of a needle's eye;
Things unborn, things that are gone,
From needle's eye still goad it on".

William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939) Irish poet, dramatist, prose writer. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival. In his later years served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State. Read more

Gettin' together to smile an' rejoice,
An' eatin' an' laughin' with folks of your choice;
An' kissin' the girls an' declarin' that they
Are growin' more beautiful day after day;
Chattin' an' braggin' a bit with the men,
Buildin' the old family circle again;
Livin' the wholesome an' old-fashioned cheer,
Just for awhile at the end of the year.

Greetings fly fast as we crowd through the door
And under the old roof we gather once more
Just as we did when the youngsters were small;
Mother's a little bit grayer, that's all.
Father's a little bit older, but still
Ready to romp an' to laugh with a will.
Here we are back at the table again
Tellin' our stories as women an' men.

Bowed are our heads for a moment in prayer;
Oh, but we're grateful an' glad to be there.
Home from the east land an' home from the west,
Home with the folks that are dearest an' best.
Out of the sham of the cities afar
We've come for a time to be just what we are.
Here we can talk of ourselves an' be frank,
Forgettin' position an' station an' rank.

Give me the end of the year an' its fun
When most of the plannin' an' toilin' is done;
Bring all the wanderers home to the nest,
Let me sit down with the ones I love best,
Hear the old voices still ringin' with song,
See the old faces unblemished by wrong,
See the old table with all of its chairs
An' I'll put soul in my Thanksgivin' prayers.

Edgar Albert Guest (1881 – 1959) was a British-born American poet who became known as the People's Poet. His family moved from England to Detroit, Michigan when he was ten years old and he lived there the rest of his life. He worked for the Detroit Free
Press for 64 years. He published more than twenty volumes of poetry and was thought to have written over 12,000 poems. His poems often had an inspirational and optimistic view of everyday life. Of his poems he said, "I take simple everyday things that happen to me and I figure it happens to a lot of other people and I make simple rhymes out of them. "His popularity led NBC to produce a weekly 15-minute radio program, “Guest in Your Home,” which ran from 1931 to 1942. The Joplin Globe editorialized his passing by quoting Philip Coldren, the late editorial page editor who wrote that the key to Guest’s greatness was “that among the thousands of Guest poems, ‘there has not been a single one that has promoted wickedness or meanness or anything else but kindness and gentleness and peace and hope."

Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I’d been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.

Dorothy Parker (1893 – 1967) Born Dorothy Rothschild, was an American poet, writer, critic, and satirist with a reputation for sharp wit. Some of her works have been set to music. The Poem "Inventory" was published in 1926 and it is now in the Public domain

In a church which is furnish'd with mullion and gable,
With altar and reredos, with gargoyle and groin,
The penitents' dresses are sealskin and sable,
The odour of sanctity's eau-de-Cologne.
But only could Lucifer, flying from Hades,
Gaze down on this crowd with its panniers and paints,
He would say, as he look'd at the lords and the ladies,
"Oh, where is All-Sinners', if this is All-Saints'?"

Edmund Yates (1831 - 1894) British journalist, novelist and dramatist. Born in Edinburgh. In 1854 he published his first book "My Haunts and their Frequenters", after which followed a succession of novels and plays.Yates was perhaps best known as proprietor and editor, under the pen-name of "Atlas", of The World Society newspaper.

Public Domain Poem

                   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.