Written by
Edwin Arlington Robinson |
We parted where the old gas-lamp still burned
Under the wayside maple and walked on,
Into the dark, as we had always done;
And I, no doubt, if he had not returned,
Might yet be unaware that he had earned
More than earth gives to many who have won
More than it has to give when they are gone--
As duly and indelibly I learned.
The sum of all that he came back to say
Was little then, and would be less today:
With him there were no Delphic heights to climb,
Yet his were somehow nearer the sublime.
He spoke, and went again by the old way--
Not knowing it would be for the last time.
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Written by
Belinda Subraman |
As we slide into the 3rd world we have created,
running from hurricanes,
with our SS# indelibly inked on our arms
storms swell and swallow our control.
I am flooded with life review,
the beliefs of my youth.
I reach for my first Bible
which has survived every move.
I am mystified by Revelation’s
hallucinations again.
I would like to clutch an answer close,
bury myself in a father’s love
but that’s not how it goes.
There is only process,
synthesizing experience toward wisdom,
almost getting there,
like hanging on to a tree in a hurricane,
before being swept out to sea.
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Written by
Thomas Hardy |
I
"O Lord, why grievest Thou? -
Since Life has ceased to be
Upon this globe, now cold
As lunar land and sea,
And humankind, and fowl, and fur
Are gone eternally,
All is the same to Thee as ere
They knew mortality."
II
"O Time," replied the Lord,
"Thou read'st me ill, I ween;
Were all THE SAME, I should not grieve
At that late earthly scene,
Now blestly past--though planned by me
With interest close and keen! -
Nay, nay: things now are NOT the same
As they have earlier been.
III
"Written indelibly
On my eternal mind
Are all the wrongs endured
By Earth's poor patient kind,
Which my too oft unconscious hand
Let enter undesigned.
No god can cancel deeds foredone,
Or thy old coils unwind!
IV
"As when, in Noe's days,
I whelmed the plains with sea,
So at this last, when flesh
And herb but fossils be,
And, all extinct, their piteous dust
Revolves obliviously,
That I made Earth, and life, and man,
It still repenteth me!"
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