Best Famous Far Off Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Far Off poems. This is a select list of the best famous Far Off poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Far Off poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of far off poems.

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• All Famous Far Off Poems

Written by Edgar Allan Poe | The City In the Sea Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone Far down within the dim West Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest. There shrines and palaces and towers (Time-eaten towers that tremble not!) Resemble nothing that is ours. Around by lifting winds forgot Resignedly beneath the sky The melancholy waters lie. No rays from the holy heaven come down On the long night-time of that town; But light from out the lurid sea Streams up the turrets silently- Gleams up the pinnacles far and free- Up domes- up spires- up kingly halls- Up fanes- up Babylon-like walls- Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers- Up many and many a marvellous shrine Whose wreathed friezes intertwine The viol the violet and the vine. Resignedly beneath the sky The melancholy waters lie. So blend the turrets and shadows there That all seem pendulous in air While from a proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down. There open fanes and gaping graves Yawn level with the luminous waves; But not the riches there that lie In each idol's diamond eye- Not the gaily-jewelled dead Tempt the waters from their bed; For no ripples curl alas! Along that wilderness of glass- No swellings tell that winds may be Upon some far-off happier sea- No heavings hint that winds have been On seas less hideously serene. But lo a stir is in the air! The wave- there is a movement there! As if the towers had thrust aside In slightly sinking the dull tide- As if their tops had feebly given A void within the filmy Heaven. The waves have now a redder glow- The hours are breathing faint and low- And when amid no earthly moans Down down that town shall settle hence Hell rising from a thousand thrones Shall do it reverence.

Written by Henry Kendall | Mountains RIFTED mountains, clad with forests, girded round by gleaming pines, Where the morning, like an angel, robed in golden splendour shines; Shimmering mountains, throwing downward on the slopes a mazy glare Where the noonday glory sails through gulfs of calm and glittering air; Stately mountains, high and hoary, piled with blocks of amber cloud, Where the fading twilight lingers, when the winds are wailing loud; Grand old mountains, overbeetling brawling brooks and deep ravines, Where the moonshine, pale and mournful, flows on rocks and evergreens. Underneath these regal ridges - underneath the gnarly trees, I am sitting, lonely-hearted, listening to a lonely breeze! Sitting by an ancient casement, casting many a longing look Out across the hazy gloaming - out beyond the brawling brook! Over pathways leading skyward - over crag and swelling cone, Past long hillocks looking like to waves of ocean turned to stone; Yearning for a bliss unworldly, yearning for a brighter change, Yearning for the mystic Aidenn, built beyond this mountain range. Happy years, amongst these valleys, happy years have come and gone, And my youthful hopes and friendships withered with them one by one; Days and moments bearing onward many a bright and beauteous dream, All have passed me like to sunstreaks flying down a distant stream. Oh, the love returned by loved ones! Oh, the faces that I knew! Oh, the wrecks of fond affection! Oh, the hearts so warm and true! But their voices I remember, and a something lingers still, Like a dying echo roaming sadly round a far off hill. I would sojourn here contented, tranquil as I was of yore, And would never wish to clamber, seeking for an unknown shore; I have dwelt within this cottage twenty summers, and mine eyes Never wandered erewhile round in search of undiscovered skies; But a spirit sits beside me, veiled in robes of dazzling white, And a dear one's whisper wakens with the symphonies of night; And a low sad music cometh, borne along on windy wings, Like a strain familiar rising from a maze of slumbering springs. And the Spirit, by my window, speaketh to my restless soul, Telling of the clime she came from, where the silent moments roll; Telling of the bourne mysterious, where the sunny summers flee Cliffs and coasts, by man untrodden, ridging round a shipless sea. There the years of yore are blooming - there departed life-dreams dwell, There the faces beam with gladness that I loved in youth so well; There the songs of childhood travel, over wave-worn steep and strand - Over dale and upland stretching out behind this mountain land. ``Lovely Being, can a mortal, weary of this changeless scene, Cross these cloudy summits to the land where man hath never been? Can he find a pathway leading through that wildering mass of pines, So that he shall reach the country where ethereal glory shines; So that he may glance at waters never dark with coming ships; Hearing round him gentle language floating from angelic lips; Casting off his earthly fetters, living there for evermore; All the blooms of Beauty near him, gleaming on that quiet shore? ``Ere you quit this ancient casement, tell me, is it well to yearn For the evanescent visions, vanished never to return? Is it well that I should with to leave this dreary world behind, Seeking for your fair Utopia, which perchance I may not find? Passing through a gloomy forest, scaling steeps like prison walls, Where the scanty sunshine wavers and the moonlight seldom falls? Oh, the feelings re-awakened! Oh, the hopes of loftier range! Is it well, thou friendly Being, well to wish for such a change?'' But the Spirit answers nothing! and the dazzling mantle fades; And a wailing whisper wanders out from dismal seaside shades! ``Lo, the trees are moaning loudly, underneath their hood-like shrouds, And the arch above us darkens, scarred with ragged thunder clouds!'' But the spirit answers nothing, and I linger all alone, Gazing through the moony vapours where the lovely Dream has flown; And my heart is beating sadly, and the music waxeth faint, Sailing up to holy Heaven, like the anthems of a Saint.

Written by Siegfried Sassoon | Haunted EVENING was in the wood, louring with storm. A time of drought had sucked the weedy pool And baked the channels; birds had done with song. Thirst was a dream of fountains in the moon, Or willow-music blown across the water 5 Leisurely sliding on by weir and mill. Uneasy was the man who wandered, brooding, His face a little whiter than the dusk. A drone of sultry wings flicker¡¯d in his head. The end of sunset burning thro¡¯ the boughs 10 Died in a smear of red; exhausted hours Cumber¡¯d, and ugly sorrows hemmed him in. He thought: ¡®Somewhere there¡¯s thunder,¡¯ as he strove To shake off dread; he dared not look behind him, But stood, the sweat of horror on his face. 15 He blunder¡¯d down a path, trampling on thistles, In sudden race to leave the ghostly trees. And: ¡®Soon I¡¯ll be in open fields,¡¯ he thought, And half remembered starlight on the meadows, Scent of mown grass and voices of tired men, 20 Fading along the field-paths; home and sleep And cool-swept upland spaces, whispering leaves, And far off the long churring night-jar¡¯s note. But something in the wood, trying to daunt him, Led him confused in circles through the thicket. 25 He was forgetting his old wretched folly, And freedom was his need; his throat was choking. Barbed brambles gripped and clawed him round his legs, And he floundered over snags and hidden stumps. Mumbling: ¡®I will get out! I must get out!¡¯ 30 Butting and thrusting up the baffling gloom, Pausing to listen in a space ¡¯twixt thorns, He peers around with peering, frantic eyes. An evil creature in the twilight looping, Flapped blindly in his face. Beating it off, 35 He screeched in terror, and straightway something clambered Heavily from an oak, and dropped, bent double, To shamble at him zigzag, squat and bestial. Headlong he charges down the wood, and falls With roaring brain¡ªagony¡ªthe snap¡¯t spark¡ª 40 And blots of green and purple in his eyes. Then the slow fingers groping on his neck, And at his heart the strangling clasp of death.

Written by William Butler Yeats | The Phases Of The Moon An old man cocked his car upon a bridge; He and his friend, their faces to the South, Had trod the uneven road. Their hoots were soiled, Their Connemara cloth worn out of shape; They had kept a steady pace as though their beds, Despite a dwindling and late-risen moon, Were distant still. An old man cocked his ear. Aherne. What made that Sound? Robartes. A rat or water-hen Splashed, or an otter slid into the stream. We are on the bridge; that shadow is the tower, And the light proves that he is reading still. He has found, after the manner of his kind, Mere images; chosen this place to live in Because, it may be, of the candle-light From the far tower where Milton's Platonist Sat late, or Shelley's visionary prince: The lonely light that Samuel Palmer engraved, An image of mysterious wisdom won by toil; And now he seeks in book or manuscript What he shall never find. Ahernc. Why should not you Who know it all ring at his door, and speak Just truth enough to show that his whole life Will scarcely find for him a broken crust Of all those truths that are your daily bread; And when you have spoken take the roads again? Robartes. He wrote of me in that extravagant style He had learnt from pater, and to round his tale Said I was dead; and dead I choose to be. Aherne. Sing me the changes of the moon once more; True song, though speech: "mine author sung it me. ' Robartes. Twenty-and-eight the phases of the moon, The full and the moon's dark and all the crescents, Twenty-and-eight, and yet but six-and-twenty The cradles that a man must needs be rocked in: For there's no human life at the full or the dark. From the first crescent to the half, the dream But summons to adventure and the man Is always happy like a bird or a beast; But while the moon is rounding towards the full He follows whatever whim's most difficult Among whims not impossible, and though scarred. As with the cat-o'-nine-tails of the mind, His body moulded from within his body Grows comelier. Eleven pass, and then Athene takes Achilles by the hair, Hector is in the dust, Nietzsche is born, Because the hero's crescent is the twelfth. And yet, twice born, twice buried, grow he must, Before the full moon, helpless as a worm. The thirteenth moon but sets the soul at war In its own being, and when that war's begun There is no muscle in the arm; and after, Under the frenzy of the fourteenth moon, The soul begins to tremble into stillness, To die into the labyrinth of itself! Aherne. Sing out the song; sing to the end, and sing The strange reward of all that discipline. Robartes. All thought becomes an image and the soul Becomes a body: that body and that soul Too perfect at the full to lie in a cradle, Too lonely for the traffic of the world: Body and soul cast out and cast away Beyond the visible world. Aherne. All dreams of the soul End in a beautiful man's or woman's body. Robartes, Have you not always known it? Aherne. The song will have it That those that we have loved got their long fingers From death, and wounds, or on Sinai's top, Or from some bloody whip in their own hands. They ran from cradle to cradle till at last Their beauty dropped out of the loneliness Of body and soul. Robartes. The lover's heart knows that. Aherne. It must be that the terror in their eyes Is memory or foreknowledge of the hour When all is fed with light and heaven is bare. Robartes. When the moon's full those creatures of the full Are met on the waste hills by countrymen Who shudder and hurry by: body and soul Estranged amid the strangeness of themselves, Caught up in contemplation, the mind's eye Fixed upon images that once were thought; For separate, perfect, and immovable Images can break the solitude Of lovely, satisfied, indifferent eyes. And thereupon with aged, high-pitched voice Aherne laughed, thinking of the man within, His sleepless candle and lahorious pen. Robartes. And after that the crumbling of the moon. The soul remembering its loneliness Shudders in many cradles; all is changed, It would be the world's servant, and as it serves, Choosing whatever task's most difficult Among tasks not impossible, it takes Upon the body and upon the soul The coarseness of the drudge. Aherne. Before the full It sought itself and afterwards the world. Robartes. Because you are forgotten, half out of life, And never wrote a book, your thought is clear. Reformer, merchant, statesman, learned man, Dutiful husband, honest wife by turn, Cradle upon cradle, and all in flight and all Deformed because there is no deformity But saves us from a dream. Aherne. And what of those That the last servile crescent has set free? Robartes. Because all dark, like those that are all light, They are cast beyond the verge, and in a cloud, Crying to one another like the bats; And having no desire they cannot tell What's good or bad, or what it is to triumph At the perfection of one's own obedience; And yet they speak what's blown into the mind; Deformed beyond deformity, unformed, Insipid as the dough before it is baked, They change their bodies at a word. Aherne. And then? Rohartes. When all the dough has been so kneaded up That it can take what form cook Nature fancies, The first thin crescent is wheeled round once more. Aherne. But the escape; the song's not finished yet. Robartes. Hunchback and Saint and Fool are the last crescents. The burning bow that once could shoot an arrow Out of the up and down, the wagon-wheel Of beauty's cruelty and wisdom's chatter - Out of that raving tide - is drawn betwixt Deformity of body and of mind. Aherne. Were not our beds far off I'd ring the bell, Stand under the rough roof-timbers of the hall Beside the castle door, where all is stark Austerity, a place set out for wisdom That he will never find; I'd play a part; He would never know me after all these years But take me for some drunken countryman: I'd stand and mutter there until he caught "Hunchback and Sant and Fool,' and that they came Under the three last crescents of the moon. And then I'd stagger out. He'd crack his wits Day after day, yet never find the meaning. And then he laughed to think that what seemed hard Should be so simple - a bat rose from the hazels And circled round him with its squeaky cry, The light in the tower window was put out.

Written by John Greenleaf Whittier | Burning Drift-Wood Before my drift-wood fire I sit, And see, with every waif I burn, Old dreams and fancies coloring it, And folly's unlaid ghosts return. O ships of mine, whose swift keels cleft The enchanted sea on which they sailed, Are these poor fragments only left Of vain desires and hopes that failed? Did I not watch from them the light Of sunset on my towers in Spain, And see, far off, uploom in sight The Fortunate Isles I might not gain? Did sudden lift of fog reveal Arcadia's vales of song and spring, And did I pass, with grazing keel, The rocks whereon the sirens sing? Have I not drifted hard upon The unmapped regions lost to man, The cloud-pitched tents of Prester John, The palace domes of Kubla Khan? Did land winds blow from jasmine flowers, Where Youth the ageless Fountain fills? Did Love make sign from rose blown bowers, And gold from Eldorado's hills? Alas! the gallant ships, that sailed On blind Adventure's errand sent, Howe'er they laid their courses, failed To reach the haven of Content. And of my ventures, those alone Which Love had freighted, safely sped, Seeking a good beyond my own, By clear-eyed Duty piloted. O mariners, hoping still to meet The luck Arabian voyagers met, And find in Bagdad's moonlit street, Haroun al Raschid walking yet, Take with you, on your Sea of Dreams, The fair, fond fancies dear to youth. I turn from all that only seems, And seek the sober grounds of truth. What matter that it is not May, That birds have flown, and trees are bare, That darker grows the shortening day, And colder blows the wintry air! The wrecks of passion and desire, The castles I no more rebuild, May fitly feed my drift-wood fire, And warm the hands that age has chilled. Whatever perished with my ships, I only know the best remains; A song of praise is on my lips For losses which are now my gains. Heap high my hearth! No worth is lost; No wisdom with the folly dies. Burn on, poor shreds, your holocaust Shall be my evening sacrifice! Far more than all I dared to dream, Unsought before my door I see; On wings of fire and steeds of steam The world's great wonders come to me, And holier signs, unmarked before, Of Love to seek and Power to save,— The righting of the wronged and poor, The man evolving from the slave; And life, no longer chance or fate, Safe in the gracious Fatherhood. I fold o'er-wearied hands and wait, In full assurance of the good. And well the waiting time must be, Though brief or long its granted days, If Faith and Hope and Charity Sit by my evening hearth-fire's blaze. And with them, friends whom Heaven has spared, Whose love my heart has comforted, And, sharing all my joys, has shared My tender memories of the dead,— Dear souls who left us lonely here, Bound on their last, long voyage, to whom We, day by day, are drawing near, Where every bark has sailing room. I know the solemn monotone Of waters calling unto me; I know from whence the airs have blown That whisper of the Eternal Sea. As low my fires of drift-wood burn, I hear that sea's deep sounds increase, And, fair in sunset light, discern Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace.

Written by Federico García Lorca | City That Does Not Sleep In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody. Nobody is asleep. The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins. The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream, and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the street corner the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the stars. Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody. Nobody is asleep. In a graveyard far off there is a corpse who has moaned for three years because of a dry countryside on his knee; and that boy they buried this morning cried so much it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet. Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful! We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead dahlias. But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist; flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths in a thicket of new veins, and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders. One day the horses will live in the saloons and the enraged ants will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the eyes of cows. Another day we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue. Careful! Be careful! Be careful! The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm, and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention of the bridge, or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe, we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes are waiting, where the bear's teeth are waiting, where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting, and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder. Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody, nobody. Nobody is sleeping. If someone does close his eyes, a whip, boys, a whip! Let there be a landscape of open eyes and bitter wounds on fire. No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one. I have said it before. No one is sleeping. But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the night, open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theaters.

Written by Philip Levine | Late Light Rain filled the streets once a year, rising almost to door and window sills, battering walls and roofs until it cleaned away the mess we'd made. My father told me this, he told me it ran downtown and spilled into the river, which in turn emptied finally into the sea. He said this only once while I sat on the arm of his chair and stared out at the banks of gray snow melting as the March rain streaked past. All the rest of that day passed on into childhood, into nothing, or perhaps some portion hung on in a tiny corner of thought. Perhaps a clot of cinders that peppered the front yard clung to a spar of old weed or the concrete lip of the curb and worked its way back under the new growth spring brought and is a part of that yard still. Perhaps light falling on distant houses becomes those houses, hunching them down at dusk like sheep browsing on a far hillside, or at daybreak gilds the roofs until they groan under the new weight, or after rain lifts haloes of steam from the rinsed, white aluminum siding, and those houses and all they contain live that day in the sight of heaven. II In the blue, winking light of the International Institute of Social Revolution I fell asleep one afternoon over a book of memoirs of a Spanish priest who'd served his own private faith in a long forgotten war. An Anarchist and a Catholic, his remembrances moved inexplicably from Castilian to Catalan, a language I couldn't follow. That dust, fine and gray, peculiar to libraries, slipped between the glossy pages and my sight, a slow darkness calmed me, and I forgot the agony of those men I'd come to love, forgot the battles lost and won, forgot the final trek over hopeless mountain roads, defeat, surrender, the vows to live on. I slept until the lights came on and off. A girl was prodding my arm, for the place was closing. A slender Indonesian girl in sweater and American jeans, her black hair falling almost to my eyes, she told me in perfect English that I could come back, and she swept up into a folder the yellowing newspaper stories and photos spilled out before me on the desk, the little chronicles of death themselves curling and blurring into death, and took away the book still unfinished of a man more confused even than I, and switched off the light, and left me alone. III In June of 1975 I wakened one late afternoon in Amsterdam in a dim corner of a library. I had fallen asleep over a book and was roused by a young girl whose hand lay on my hand. I turned my head up and stared into her brown eyes, deep and gleaming. She was crying. For a second I was confused and started to speak, to offer some comfort or aid, but I kept still, for she was crying for me, for the knowledge that I had wakened to a life in which loss was final. I closed my eyes a moment. When I opened them she'd gone, the place was dark. I went out into the golden sunlight; the cobbled streets gleamed as after rain, the street cafes crowded and alive. Not far off the great bell of the Westerkirk tolled in the early evening. I thought of my oldest son, who years before had sailed from here into an unknown life in Sweden, a life which failed, of how he'd gone alone to Copenhagen, Bremen, where he'd loaded trains, Hamburg, Munich, and finally -- sick and weary -- he'd returned to us. He slept in a corner of the living room for days, and woke gaunt and quiet, still only seventeen, his face in its own shadows. I thought of my father on the run from an older war, and wondered had he passed through Amsterdam, had he stood, as I did now, gazing up at the pale sky, distant and opaque, for the sign that never comes. Had he drifted in the same winds of doubt and change to another continent, another life, a family, some years of peace, an early death. I walked on by myself for miles and still the light hung on as though the day would never end. The gray canals darkened slowly, the sky above the high, narrow houses deepened into blue, and one by one the stars began their singular voyages.

Written by Charlotte Bronte | The Missionary Lough, vessel, plough the British main, Seek the free ocean's wider plain; Leave English scenes and English skies, Unbind, dissever English ties; Bear me to climes remote and strange, Where altered life, fast-following change, Hot action, never-ceasing toil, Shall stir, turn, dig, the spirit's soil; Fresh roots shall plant, fresh seed shall sow, Till a new garden there shall grow, Cleared of the weeds that fill it now,­ Mere human love, mere selfish yearning, Which, cherished, would arrest me yet. I grasp the plough, there's no returning, Let me, then, struggle to forget. But England's shores are yet in view, And England's skies of tender blue Are arched above her guardian sea. I cannot yet Remembrance flee; I must again, then, firmly face That task of anguish, to retrace. Wedded to home­I home forsake, Fearful of change­I changes make; Too fond of ease­I plunge in toil; Lover of calm­I seek turmoil: Nature and hostile Destiny Stir in my heart a conflict wild; And long and fierce the war will be Ere duty both has reconciled. What other tie yet holds me fast To the divorced, abandoned past? Smouldering, on my heart's altar lies The fire of some great sacrifice, Not yet half quenched. The sacred steel But lately struck my carnal will, My life-long hope, first joy and last, What I loved well, and clung to fast; What I wished wildly to retain, What I renounced with soul-felt pain; What­when I saw it, axe-struck, perish­ Left me no joy on earth to cherish; A man bereft­yet sternly now I do confirm that Jephtha vow: Shall I retract, or fear, or flee ? Did Christ, when rose the fatal tree Before him, on Mount Calvary ? 'Twas a long fight, hard fought, but won, And what I did was justly done. Yet, Helen ! from thy love I turned, When my heart most for thy heart burned; I dared thy tears, I dared thy scorn­ Easier the death-pang had been borne. Helen ! thou mightst not go with me, I could not­dared not stay for thee ! I heard, afar, in bonds complain The savage from beyond the main; And that wild sound rose o'er the cry Wrung out by passion's agony; And even when, with the bitterest tear I ever shed, mine eyes were dim, Still, with the spirit's vision clear, I saw Hell's empire, vast and grim, Spread on each Indian river's shore, Each realm of Asia covering o'er. There the weak, trampled by the strong, Live but to suffer­hopeless die; There pagan-priests, whose creed is Wrong, Extortion, Lust, and Cruelty, Crush our lost race­and brimming fill The bitter cup of human ill; And I­who have the healing creed, The faith benign of Mary's Son; Shall I behold my brother's need And selfishly to aid him shun ? I­who upon my mother's knees, In childhood, read Christ's written word, Received his legacy of peace, His holy rule of action heard; I­in whose heart the sacred sense Of Jesus' love was early felt; Of his pure full benevolence, His pitying tenderness for guilt; His shepherd-care for wandering sheep, For all weak, sorrowing, trembling things, His mercy vast, his passion deep Of anguish for man's sufferings; I­schooled from childhood in such lore­ Dared I draw back or hesitate, When called to heal the sickness sore Of those far off and desolate ? Dark, in the realm and shades of Death, Nations and tribes and empires lie, But even to them the light of Faith Is breaking on their sombre sky: And be it mine to bid them raise Their drooped heads to the kindling scene, And know and hail the sunrise blaze Which heralds Christ the Nazarene. I know how Hell the veil will spread Over their brows and filmy eyes, And earthward crush the lifted head That would look up and seek the skies; I know what war the fiend will wage Against that soldier of the cross, Who comes to dare his demon-rage, And work his kingdom shame and loss. Yes, hard and terrible the toil Of him who steps on foreign soil, Resolved to plant the gospel vine, Where tyrants rule and slaves repine; Eager to lift Religion's light Where thickest shades of mental night Screen the false god and fiendish rite; Reckless that missionary blood, Shed in wild wilderness and wood, Has left, upon the unblest air, The man's deep moan­the martyr's prayer. I know my lot­I only ask Power to fulfil the glorious task; Willing the spirit, may the flesh Strength for the day receive afresh. May burning sun or deadly wind Prevail not o'er an earnest mind; May torments strange or direst death Nor trample truth, nor baffle faith. Though such blood-drops should fall from me As fell in old Gethsemane, Welcome the anguish, so it gave More strength to work­more skill to save. And, oh ! if brief must be my time, If hostile hand or fatal clime Cut short my course­still o'er my grave, Lord, may thy harvest whitening wave. So I the culture may begin, Let others thrust the sickle in; If but the seed will faster grow, May my blood water what I sow ! What ! have I ever trembling stood, And feared to give to God that blood ? What ! has the coward love of life Made me shrink from the righteous strife ? Have human passions, human fears Severed me from those Pioneers, Whose task is to march first, and trace Paths for the progress of our race ? It has been so; but grant me, Lord, Now to stand steadfast by thy word ! Protected by salvation's helm, Shielded by faith­with truth begirt, To smile when trials seek to whelm And stand 'mid testing fires unhurt ! Hurling hell's strongest bulwarks down, Even when the last pang thrills my breast, When Death bestows the Martyr's crown, And calls me into Jesus' rest. Then for my ultimate reward­ Then for the world-rejoicing word­ The voice from Father­Spirit­Son: " Servant of God, well hast thou done !"

Written by Rainer Maria Rilke | Self-Portrait 1906 The stamina of an old long-noble race in the eyebrows' heavy arches. In the mild blue eyes the solemn anguish of a child and here and there humility-not a fool's but feminine: the look of one who serves. The mouth quite ordinary large and straight composed yet not willing to speak out when necessary. The forehead still na?ve most comfortable in shadows looking down. This as a whole just hazily foreseen- never in any joy of suffering collected for a firm accomplishment; and yet as though from far off with scattered Things a serious true work were being planned.

Written by Anne Sexton | Flee On Your Donkey Because there was no other place to flee to, I came back to the scene of the disordered senses, came back last night at midnight, arriving in the thick June night without luggage or defenses, giving up my car keys and my cash, keeping only a pack of Salem cigarettes the way a child holds on to a toy. I signed myself in where a stranger puts the inked-in X's— for this is a mental hospital, not a child's game. Today an intern knocks my knees, testing for reflexes. Once I would have winked and begged for dope. Today I am terribly patient. Today crows play black-jack on the stethoscope. Everyone has left me except my muse, that good nurse. She stays in my hand, a mild white mouse. The curtains, lazy and delicate, billow and flutter and drop like the Victorian skirts of my two maiden aunts who kept an antique shop. Hornets have been sent. They cluster like floral arrangements on the screen. Hornets, dragging their thin stingers, hover outside, all knowing, hissing: the hornet knows. I heard it as a child but what was it that he meant? The hornet knows! What happened to Jack and Doc and Reggy? Who remembers what lurks in the heart of man? What did The Green Hornet mean, he knows? Or have I got it wrong? Is it The Shadow who had seen me from my bedside radio? Now it's Dinn, Dinn, Dinn! while the ladies in the next room argue and pick their teeth. Upstairs a girl curls like a snail; in another room someone tries to eat a shoe; meanwhile an adolescent pads up and down the hall in his white tennis socks. A new doctor makes rounds advertising tranquilizers, insulin, or shock to the uninitiated. Six years of such small preoccupations! Six years of shuttling in and out of this place! O my hunger! My hunger! I could have gone around the world twice or had new children - all boys. It was a long trip with little days in it and no new places. In here, it's the same old crowd, the same ruined scene. The alcoholic arrives with his gold culbs. The suicide arrives with extra pills sewn into the lining of her dress. The permanent guests have done nothing new. Their faces are still small like babies with jaundice. Meanwhile, they carried out my mother, wrapped like somebody's doll, in sheets, bandaged her jaw and stuffed up her holes. My father, too. He went out on the rotten blood he used up on other women in the Middle West. He went out, a cured old alcoholic on crooked feet and useless hands. He went out calling for his father who died all by himself long ago - that fat banker who got locked up, his genes suspened like dollars, wrapped up in his secret, tied up securely in a straitjacket. But you, my doctor, my enthusiast, were better than Christ; you promised me another world to tell me who I was. I spent most of my time, a stranger, damned and in trance—that little hut, that naked blue-veined place, my eyes shut on the confusing office, eyes circling into my childhood, eyes newly cut. Years of hints strung out—a serialized case history— thirty-three years of the same dull incest that sustained us both. You, my bachelor analyst, who sat on Marlborough Street, sharing your office with your mother and giving up cigarettes each New Year, were the new God, the manager of the Gideon Bible. I was your third-grader with a blue star on my forehead. In trance I could be any age, voice, gesture—all turned backward like a drugstore clock. Awake, I memorized dreams. Dreams came into the ring like third string fighters, each one a bad bet who might win because there was no other. I stared at them, concentrating on the abyss the way one looks down into a rock quarry, uncountable miles down, my hands swinging down like hooks to pull dreams up out of their cage. O my hunger! My hunger! Once, outside your office, I collapsed in the old-fashioned swoon between the illegally parked cars. I threw myself down, pretending dead for eight hours. I thought I had died into a snowstorm. Above my head chains cracked along like teeth digging their way through the snowy street. I lay there like an overcoat that someone had thrown away. You carried me back in, awkwardly, tenderly, with help of the red-haired secretary who was built like a lifeguard. My shoes, I remember, were lost in the snowbank as if I planned never to walk again. That was the winter that my mother died, half mad on morphine, blown up, at last, like a pregnant pig. I was her dreamy evil eye. In fact, I carried a knife in my pocketbook— my husband's good L. L. Bean hunting knife. I wasn't sure if I should slash a tire or scrape the guts out of some dream. You taught me to believe in dreams; thus I was the dredger. I held them like an old woman with arthritic fingers, carefully straining the water out— sweet dark playthings, and above all, mysterious until they grew mournful and weak. O my hunger! My hunger! I was the one who opened the warm eyelid like a surgeon and brought forth young girls to grunt like fish. I told you, I said— but I was lying— that the kife was for my mother . . . and then I delivered her. The curtains flutter out and slump against the bars. They are my two thin ladies named Blanche and Rose. The grounds outside are pruned like an estate at Newport. Far off, in the field, something yellow grows. Was it last month or last year that the ambulance ran like a hearse with its siren blowing on suicide— Dinn, dinn, dinn!— a noon whistle that kept insisting on life all the way through the traffic lights? I have come back but disorder is not what it was. I have lost the trick of it! The innocence of it! That fellow-patient in his stovepipe hat with his fiery joke, his manic smile— even he seems blurred, small and pale. I have come back, recommitted, fastened to the wall like a bathroom plunger, held like a prisoner who was so poor he fell in love with jail. I stand at this old window complaining of the soup, examining the grounds, allowing myself the wasted life. Soon I will raise my face for a white flag, and when God enters the fort, I won't spit or gag on his finger. I will eat it like a white flower. Is this the old trick, the wasting away, the skull that waits for its dose of electric power? This is madness but a kind of hunger. What good are my questions in this hierarchy of death where the earth and the stones go Dinn! Dinn! Dinn! It is hardly a feast. It is my stomach that makes me suffer. Turn, my hungers! For once make a deliberate decision. There are brains that rot here like black bananas. Hearts have grown as flat as dinner plates. Anne, Anne, flee on your donkey, flee this sad hotel, ride out on some hairy beast, gallop backward pressing your buttocks to his withers, sit to his clumsy gait somehow. Ride out any old way you please! In this place everyone talks to his own mouth. That's what it means to be crazy. Those I loved best died of it— the fool's disease.