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Best Famous Insight Poems

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Written by Sylvia Plath | Create an image from this poem

Love Is A Parallax

 'Perspective betrays with its dichotomy:
train tracks always meet, not here, but only
 in the impossible mind's eye;
horizons beat a retreat as we embark
on sophist seas to overtake that mark
 where wave pretends to drench real sky.
' 'Well then, if we agree, it is not odd that one man's devil is another's god or that the solar spectrum is a multitude of shaded grays; suspense on the quicksands of ambivalence is our life's whole nemesis.
So we could rave on, darling, you and I, until the stars tick out a lullaby about each cosmic pro and con; nothing changes, for all the blazing of our drastic jargon, but clock hands that move implacably from twelve to one.
We raise our arguments like sitting ducks to knock them down with logic or with luck and contradict ourselves for fun; the waitress holds our coats and we put on the raw wind like a scarf; love is a faun who insists his playmates run.
Now you, my intellectual leprechaun, would have me swallow the entire sun like an enormous oyster, down the ocean in one gulp: you say a mark of comet hara-kiri through the dark should inflame the sleeping town.
So kiss: the drunks upon the curb and dames in dubious doorways forget their monday names, caper with candles in their heads; the leaves applaud, and santa claus flies in scattering candy from a zeppelin, playing his prodigal charades.
The moon leans down to took; the tilting fish in the rare river wink and laugh; we lavish blessings right and left and cry hello, and then hello again in deaf churchyard ears until the starlit stiff graves all carol in reply.
Now kiss again: till our strict father leans to call for curtain on our thousand scenes; brazen actors mock at him, multiply pink harlequins and sing in gay ventriloquy from wing to wing while footlights flare and houselights dim.
Tell now, we taunq where black or white begins and separate the flutes from violins: the algebra of absolutes explodes in a kaleidoscope of shapes that jar, while each polemic jackanapes joins his enemies' recruits.
The paradox is that 'the play's the thing': though prima donna pouts and critic stings, there burns throughout the line of words, the cultivated act, a fierce brief fusion which dreamers call real, and realists, illusion: an insight like the flight of birds: Arrows that lacerate the sky, while knowing the secret of their ecstasy's in going; some day, moving, one will drop, and, dropping, die, to trace a wound that heals only to reopen as flesh congeals: cycling phoenix never stops.
So we shall walk barefoot on walnut shells of withered worlds, and stamp out puny hells and heavens till the spirits squeak surrender: to build our bed as high as jack's bold beanstalk; lie and love till sharp scythe hacks away our rationed days and weeks.
Then jet the blue tent topple, stars rain down, and god or void appall us till we drown in our own tears: today we start to pay the piper with each breath, yet love knows not of death nor calculus above the simple sum of heart plus heart.


Written by Frank O'Hara | Create an image from this poem

Death

1

If half of me is skewered
by grey crested birds
in the middle of the vines of my promise
and the very fact that I'm a poet
suffers my eyes
to be filled with vermilion tears 


2

how much greater danger
from occasion and pain is my vitality
yielding like a tree on fire!--
for every day is another view
of the tentative past
grown secure in its foundry of shimmering
that's not even historical;it's just me.
3 And the other half of me where I master the root of my every idiosyncrasy and fit my ribs like a glove 4 is that me who accepts betrayal in the abstract as if it were insight? and draws its knuckles across the much-lined eyes in the most knowing manner of our time? 5 The wind that smiles through the wires isn't vague enough for an assertion of a personal nature it's not for me 6 I'm not dead.
Nothing remains let alone "to be said " except that when I fall backwards I am trying something new and shall succeed as in the past.
Written by Raymond Carver | Create an image from this poem

Stupid

 It's what the kids nowadays call weed.
And it drifts like clouds from his lips.
He hopes no one comes along tonight, or calls to ask for help.
Help is what he's most short on tonight.
A storm thrashes outside.
Heavy seas with gale winds from the west.
The table he sits at is, say, two cubits long and one wide.
The darkness in the room teems with insight.
Could be he'll write an adventure novel.
Or else a children's story.
A play for two female characters, one of whom is blind.
Cutthroat should be coming into the river.
One thing he'll do is learn to tie his own flies.
Maybe he should give more money to each of his surviving family members.
The ones who already expect a little something in the mail first of each month.
Every time they write they tell him they're coming up short.
He counts heads on his fingers and finds they're all survivng.
So what if he'd rather be remembered in the dreams of strangers? He raises his eyes to the skylights where rain hammers on.
After a while -- who knows how long? -- his eyes ask that they be closed.
And he closes them.
But the rain keeps hammering.
Is this a cloudburst? Should he do something? Secure the house in some way? Uncle Bo stayed married to Aunt Ruby for 47 years.
Then hanged himself.
He opens his eyes again.
Nothing adds up.
It all adds up.
How long will this storm go on?
Written by Edwin Arlington Robinson | Create an image from this poem

London Bridge

 “Do I hear them? Yes, I hear the children singing—and what of it? 
Have you come with eyes afire to find me now and ask me that? 
If I were not their father and if you were not their mother, 
We might believe they made a noise….
What are you—driving at!” “Well, be glad that you can hear them, and be glad they are so near us,— For I have heard the stars of heaven, and they were nearer still.
All within an hour it is that I have heard them calling, And though I pray for them to cease, I know they never will; For their music on my heart, though you may freeze it, will fall always, Like summer snow that never melts upon a mountain-top.
Do you hear them? Do you hear them overhead—the children—singing? Do you hear the children singing?… God, will you make them stop!” “And what now in His holy name have you to do with mountains? We’re back to town again, my dear, and we’ve a dance tonight.
Frozen hearts and falling music? Snow and stars, and—what the devil! Say it over to me slowly, and be sure you have it right.
” “God knows if I be right or wrong in saying what I tell you, Or if I know the meaning any more of what I say.
All I know is, it will kill me if I try to keep it hidden— Well, I met him….
Yes, I met him, and I talked with him—today.
” “You met him? Did you meet the ghost of someone you had poisoned, Long ago, before I knew you for the woman that you are? Take a chair; and don’t begin your stories always in the middle.
Was he man, or was he demon? Anyhow, you’ve gone too far To go back, and I’m your servant.
I’m the lord, but you’re the master.
Now go on with what you know, for I’m excited.
” “Do you mean— Do you mean to make me try to think that you know less than I do?” “I know that you foreshadow the beginning of a scene.
Pray be careful, and as accurate as if the doors of heaven Were to swing or to stay bolted from now on for evermore.
” “Do you conceive, with all your smooth contempt of every feeling, Of hiding what you know and what you must have known before? Is it worth a woman’s torture to stand here and have you smiling, With only your poor fetish of possession on your side? No thing but one is wholly sure, and that’s not one to scare me; When I meet it I may say to God at last that I have tried.
And yet, for all I know, or all I dare believe, my trials Henceforward will be more for you to bear than are your own; And you must give me keys of yours to rooms I have not entered.
Do you see me on your threshold all my life, and there alone? Will you tell me where you see me in your fancy—when it leads you Far enough beyond the moment for a glance at the abyss?” “Will you tell me what intrinsic and amazing sort of nonsense You are crowding on the patience of the man who gives you—this? Look around you and be sorry you’re not living in an attic, With a civet and a fish-net, and with you to pay the rent.
I say words that you can spell without the use of all your letters; And I grant, if you insist, that I’ve a guess at what you meant.
” “Have I told you, then, for nothing, that I met him? Are you trying To be merry while you try to make me hate you?” “Think again, My dear, before you tell me, in a language unbecoming To a lady, what you plan to tell me next.
If I complain, If I seem an atom peevish at the preference you mention— Or imply, to be precise—you may believe, or you may not, That I’m a trifle more aware of what he wants than you are.
But I shouldn’t throw that at you.
Make believe that I forgot.
Make believe that he’s a genius, if you like,—but in the meantime Don’t go back to rocking-horses.
There, there, there, now.
” “Make believe! When you see me standing helpless on a plank above a whirlpool, Do I drown, or do I hear you when you say it? Make believe? How much more am I to say or do for you before I tell you That I met him! What’s to follow now may be for you to choose.
Do you hear me? Won’t you listen? It’s an easy thing to listen….
” “And it’s easy to be crazy when there’s everything to lose.
” “If at last you have a notion that I mean what I am saying, Do I seem to tell you nothing when I tell you I shall try? If you save me, and I lose him—I don’t know—it won’t much matter.
I dare say that I’ve lied enough, but now I do not lie.
” “Do you fancy me the one man who has waited and said nothing While a wife has dragged an old infatuation from a tomb? Give the thing a little air and it will vanish into ashes.
There you are—piff! presto!” “When I came into this room, It seemed as if I saw the place, and you there at your table, As you are now at this moment, for the last time in my life; And I told myself before I came to find you, ‘I shall tell him, If I can, what I have learned of him since I became his wife.
’ And if you say, as I’ve no doubt you will before I finish, That you have tried unceasingly, with all your might and main, To teach me, knowing more than I of what it was I needed, Don’t think, with all you may have thought, that you have tried in vain; For you have taught me more than hides in all the shelves of knowledge Of how little you found that’s in me and was in me all along.
I believed, if I intruded nothing on you that I cared for, I’d be half as much as horses,—and it seems that I was wrong; I believed there was enough of earth in me, with all my nonsense Over things that made you sleepy, to keep something still awake; But you taught me soon to read my book, and God knows I have read it— Ages longer than an angel would have read it for your sake.
I have said that you must open other doors than I have entered, But I wondered while I said it if I might not be obscure.
Is there anything in all your pedigrees and inventories With a value more elusive than a dollar’s? Are you sure That if I starve another year for you I shall be stronger To endure another like it—and another—till I’m dead?” “Has your tame cat sold a picture?—or more likely had a windfall? Or for God’s sake, what’s broke loose? Have you a bee-hive in your head? A little more of this from you will not be easy hearing Do you know that? Understand it, if you do; for if you won’t….
What the devil are you saying! Make believe you never said it, And I’ll say I never heard it….
Oh, you….
If you….
” “If I don’t?” “There are men who say there’s reason hidden somewhere in a woman, But I doubt if God himself remembers where the key was hung.
” “He may not; for they say that even God himself is growing.
I wonder if He makes believe that He is growing young; I wonder if He makes believe that women who are giving All they have in holy loathing to a stranger all their lives Are the wise ones who build houses in the Bible….
” “Stop—you devil!” “…Or that souls are any whiter when their bodies are called wives.
If a dollar’s worth of gold will hoop the walls of hell together, Why need heaven be such a ruin of a place that never was? And if at last I lied my starving soul away to nothing, Are you sure you might not miss it? Have you come to such a pass That you would have me longer in your arms if you discovered That I made you into someone else….
Oh!…Well, there are worse ways.
But why aim it at my feet—unless you fear you may be sorry….
There are many days ahead of you.
” “I do not see those days.
” “I can see them.
Granted even I am wrong, there are the children.
And are they to praise their father for his insight if we die? Do you hear them? Do you hear them overhead—the children—singing? Do you hear them? Do you hear the children?” “Damn the children!” “Why? What have they done?…Well, then,—do it….
Do it now, and have it over.
” “Oh, you devil!…Oh, you….
” “No, I’m not a devil, I’m a prophet— One who sees the end already of so much that one end more Would have now the small importance of one other small illusion, Which in turn would have a welcome where the rest have gone before.
But if I were you, my fancy would look on a little farther For the glimpse of a release that may be somewhere still in sight.
Furthermore, you must remember those two hundred invitations For the dancing after dinner.
We shall have to shine tonight.
We shall dance, and be as happy as a pair of merry spectres, On the grave of all the lies that we shall never have to tell; We shall dance among the ruins of the tomb of our endurance, And I have not a doubt that we shall do it very well.
There!—I’m glad you’ve put it back; for I don’t like it.
Shut the drawer now.
No—no—don’t cancel anything.
I’ll dance until I drop.
I can’t walk yet, but I’m going to….
Go away somewhere, and leave me….
Oh, you children! Oh, you children!…God, will they never stop!”
Written by Matthew Arnold | Create an image from this poem

Morality

 We cannot kindle when we will
The fire which in the heart resides;
The spirit bloweth and is still,
In mystery our soul abides.
But tasks in hours of insight will'd Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd.
With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish 'twere done.
Not till the hours of light return, All we have built do we discern.
Then, when the clouds are off the soul, When thou dost bask in Nature's eye, Ask, how she view'd thy self-control, Thy struggling, task'd morality-- Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air, Oft made thee, in thy gloom, despair.
And she, whose censure thou dost dread, Whose eye thou wast afraid to seek, See, on her face a glow is spread, A strong emotion on her cheek! 'Ah, child!' she cries, 'that strife divine, Whence was it, for it is not mine? 'There is no effort on my brow-- I do not strive, I do not weep; I rush with the swift spheres and glow In joy, and when I will, I sleep.
Yet that severe, that earnest air, I saw, I felt it once--but where? 'I knew not yet the gauge of time, Nor wore the manacles of space; I felt it in some other clime, I saw it in some other place.
'Twas when the heavenly house I trod, And lay upon the breast of God.
'


Written by Charlotte Bronte | Create an image from this poem

Pilates Wifes Dream

 I've quenched my lamp, I struck it in that start
Which every limb convulsed, I heard it fall­
The crash blent with my sleep, I saw depart
Its light, even as I woke, on yonder wall;
Over against my bed, there shone a gleam
Strange, faint, and mingling also with my dream.
It sunk, and I am wrapt in utter gloom; How far is night advanced, and when will day Retinge the dusk and livid air with bloom, And fill this void with warm, creative ray ? Would I could sleep again till, clear and red, Morning shall on the mountain-tops be spread! I'd call my women, but to break their sleep, Because my own is broken, were unjust; They've wrought all day, and well-earned slumbers steep Their labours in forgetfulness, I trust; Let me my feverish watch with patience bear, Thankful that none with me its sufferings share.
Yet, Oh, for light ! one ray would tranquilise My nerves, my pulses, more than effort can; I'll draw my curtain and consult the skies: These trembling stars at dead of night look wan, Wild, restless, strange, yet cannot be more drear Than this my couch, shared by a nameless fear.
All black­one great cloud, drawn from east to west, Conceals the heavens, but there are lights below; Torches burn in Jerusalem, and cast On yonder stony mount a lurid glow.
I see men stationed there, and gleaming spears; A sound, too, from afar, invades my ears.
Dull, measured, strokes of axe and hammer ring From street to street, not loud, but through the night Distinctly heard­and some strange spectral thing Is now upreared­and, fixed against the light Of the pale lamps; defined upon that sky, It stands up like a column, straight and high.
I see it all­I know the dusky sign­ A cross on Calvary, which Jews uprear While Romans watch; and when the dawn shall shine Pilate, to judge the victim will appear, Pass sentence­yield him up to crucify; And on that cross the spotless Christ must die.
Dreams, then, are true­for thus my vision ran; Surely some oracle has been with me, The gods have chosen me to reveal their plan, To warn an unjust judge of destiny: I, slumbering, heard and saw; awake I know, Christ's coming death, and Pilate's life of woe.
I do not weep for Pilate­who could prove Regret for him whose cold and crushing sway No prayer can soften, no appeal can move; Who tramples hearts as others trample clay, Yet with a faltering, an uncertain tread, That might stir up reprisal in the dead.
Forced to sit by his side and see his deeds; Forced to behold that visage, hour by hour, In whose gaunt lines, the abhorrent gazer reads A triple lust of gold, and blood, and power; A soul whom motives, fierce, yet abject, urge Rome's servile slave, and Judah's tyrant scourge.
How can I love, or mourn, or pity him ? I, who so long my fettered hands have wrung; I, who for grief have wept my eye-sight dim; Because, while life for me was bright and young, He robbed my youth­he quenched my life's fair ray­ He crushed my mind, and did my freedom slay.
And at this hour­although I be his wife­ He has no more of tenderness from me Than any other wretch of guilty life; Less, for I know his household privacy­ I see him as he is­without a screen; And, by the gods, my soul abhors his mien ! Has he not sought my presence, dyed in blood­ Innocent, righteous blood, shed shamelessly ? And have I not his red salute withstood ? Aye,­when, as erst, he plunged all Galilee In dark bereavement­in affliction sore, Mingling their very offerings with their gore.
Then came he­in his eyes a serpent-smile, Upon his lips some false, endearing word, And, through the streets of Salem, clanged the while, His slaughtering, hacking, sacrilegious sword­ And I, to see a man cause men such woe, Trembled with ire­I did not fear to show.
And now, the envious Jewish priests have brought Jesus­whom they in mockery call their king­ To have, by this grim power, their vengeance wrought; By this mean reptile, innocence to sting.
Oh ! could I but the purposed doom avert, And shield the blameless head from cruel hurt! Accessible is Pilate's heart to fear, Omens will shake his soul, like autumn leaf; Could he this night's appalling vision hear, This just man's bonds were loosed, his life were safe, Unless that bitter priesthood should prevail, And make even terror to their malice quail.
Yet if I tell the dream­but let me pause.
What dream ? Erewhile the characters were clear, Graved on my brain­at once some unknown cause Has dimmed and rased the thoughts, which now appear, Like a vague remnant of some by-past scene;­ Not what will be, but what, long since, has been.
I suffered many things, I heard foretold A dreadful doom for Pilate,­lingering woes, In far, barbarian climes, where mountains cold Built up a solitude of trackless snows, There, he and grisly wolves prowled side by side, There he lived famished­there methought he died; But not of hunger, nor by malady; I saw the snow around him, stained with gore; I said I had no tears for such as he, And, lo ! my cheek is wet­mine eyes run o'er; I weep for mortal suffering, mortal guilt, I weep the impious deed­the blood self-spilt.
More I recall not, yet the vision spread Into a world remote, an age to come­ And still the illumined name of Jesus shed A light, a clearness, through the enfolding gloom­ And still I saw that sign, which now I see, That cross on yonder brow of Calvary.
What is this Hebrew Christ ? To me unknown, His lineage­doctrine­mission­yet how clear, Is God-like goodness, in his actions shewn ! How straight and stainless is his life's career ! The ray of Deity that rests on him, In my eyes makes Olympian glory dim.
The world advances, Greek, or Roman rite Suffices not the inquiring mind to stay; The searching soul demands a purer light To guide it on its upward, onward way; Ashamed of sculptured gods­Religion turns To where the unseen Jehovah's altar burns.
Our faith is rotten­all our rites defiled, Our temples sullied, and methinks, this man, With his new ordinance, so wise and mild, Is come, even as he says, the chaff to fan And sever from the wheat; but will his faith Survive the terrors of to-morrow's death ? * * * * * I feel a firmer trust­a higher hope Rise in my soul­it dawns with dawning day; Lo ! on the Temple's roof­on Moriah's slope Appears at length that clear, and crimson ray, Which I so wished for when shut in by night; Oh, opening skies, I hail, I bless your light ! Part, clouds and shadows ! glorious Sun appear ! Part, mental gloom ! Come insight from on high ! Dusk dawn in heaven still strives with daylight clear, The longing soul, doth still uncertain sigh.
Oh ! to behold the truth­that sun divine, How doth my bosom pant, my spirit pine ! This day, time travails with a mighty birth, This day, Truth stoops from heaven and visits earth, Ere night descends, I shall more surely know What guide to follow, in what path to go; I wait in hope­I wait in solemn fear, The oracle of God­the sole­true God­to hear.
Written by Bertolt Brecht | Create an image from this poem

Kinderhymne (Childrens Hymn)

 [original]

Anmut sparet nicht noch M?he
Leidenschaft nicht noch Verstand
Da? ein gutes Deutschland bl?he
Wie ein andres gutes Land 

Da? die V?lker nicht erbleichen
Wie vor einer R?uberin
Sondern ihre H?nde reichen
Uns wie andern V?lkern hin.
Und nicht ?ber und nicht unter Andern V?lkern wolln wir sein Von der See bis zu den Alpen Von der Oder bis zum Rhein.
Und weil wir dies Land verbessern Lieben und beschirmen wir's Und das liebste mag's uns scheinen So wie andern V?lkern ihrs.
[translation] Spare no grace or pains of yours Spare no passion or insight So that a good Germany flowers Like many another good country.
So that the peoples do not turn pale Before us as before a bird of prey— But that they reach out their hands To us as to other peoples.
And so that we desire to be not above, and not below other peoples, >From the ocean to the Alps, from the Oder to the Rhein.
And because we are tending to this land, May we love and protect it; And may it seem to us the dearest, Just as to others their own land seems.
Written by Gerard Manley Hopkins | Create an image from this poem

St. Winefreds Well

 ACT I.
SC.
I Enter Teryth from riding, Winefred following.
T.
WHAT is it, Gwen, my girl? why do you hover and haunt me? W.
You came by Caerwys, sir? T.
I came by Caerwys.
W.
There Some messenger there might have met you from my uncle.
T.
Your uncle met the messenger—met me; and this the message: Lord Beuno comes to-night.
W.
To-night, sir! T.
Soon, now: therefore Have all things ready in his room.
W.
There needs but little doing.
T.
Let what there needs be done.
Stay! with him one companion, His deacon, Dirvan Warm: twice over must the welcome be, But both will share one cell.
—This was good news, Gwenvrewi.
W.
Ah yes! T.
Why, get thee gone then; tell thy mother I want her.
Exit Winefred.
No man has such a daughter.
The fathers of the world Call no such maiden ‘mine’.
The deeper grows her dearness And more and more times laces round and round my heart, The more some monstrous hand gropes with clammy fingers there, Tampering with those sweet bines, draws them out, strains them, strains them; Meantime some tongue cries ‘What, Teryth! what, thou poor fond father! How when this bloom, this honeysuckle, that rides the air so rich about thee, Is all, all sheared away, thus!’ Then I sweat for fear.
Or else a funeral, and yet ’tis not a funeral, Some pageant which takes tears and I must foot with feeling that Alive or dead my girl is carried in it, endlessly Goes marching thro’ my mind.
What sense is this? It has none.
This is too much the father; nay the mother.
Fanciful! I here forbid my thoughts to fool themselves with fears.
Enter Gwenlo.
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ACT II.
—Scene, a wood ending in a steep bank over a dry dene, Winefred having been murdered within.
Re-enter Caradoc with a bloody sword.
C.
My heart, where have we been? What have we seen, my mind? What stroke has Caradoc’s right arm dealt? what done? Head of a rebel Struck off it has; written upon lovely limbs, In bloody letters, lessons of earnest, of revenge; Monuments of my earnest, records of my revenge, On one that went against me wh?reas I had warned her— Warned her! well she knew.
I warned her of this work.
What work? what harm ’s done? There is no harm done, none yet; Perhaps we struck no blow, Gwenvrewi lives perhaps; To makebelieve my mood was—mock.
O I might think so But here, here is a workman from his day’s task sweats.
Wiped I am sure this was; it seems not well; for still, Still the scarlet swings and dances on the blade.
So be it.
Thou steel, thou butcher, I c?n scour thee, fresh burnish thee, sheathe thee in thy dark lair; these drops Never, never, never in their blue banks again.
The woeful, Cradock, O the woeful word! Then what, What have we seen? Her head, sheared from her shoulders, fall, And lapped in shining hair, roll to the bank’s edge; then Down the beetling banks, like water in waterfalls, It stooped and flashed and fell and ran like water away.
Her eyes, oh and her eyes! In all her beauty, and sunlight to it is a pit, den, darkness, Foam-falling is not fresh to it, rainbow by it not beaming, In all her body, I say, no place was like her eyes, No piece matched those eyes kept most part much cast down But, being lifted, immortal, of immortal brightness.
Several times I saw them, thrice or four times turning; Round and round they came and flashed towards heaven: O there, There they did appeal.
Therefore airy vengeances Are afoot; heaven-vault fast purpling portends, and what first lightning Any instant falls means me.
And I do not repent; I do not and I will not repent, not repent.
The blame bear who aroused me.
What I have done violent I have like a lion done, lionlike done, Honouring an uncontrolled royal wrathful nature, Mantling passion in a grandeur, crimson grandeur.
Now be my pride then perfect, all one piece.
Henceforth In a wide world of defiance Caradoc lives alone, Loyal to his own soul, laying his own law down, no law nor Lord now curb him for ever.
O daring! O deep insight! What is virtue? Valour; only the heart valiant.
And right? Only resolution; will, his will unwavering Who, like me, knowing his nature to the heart home, nature’s business, Despatches with no flinching.
But will flesh, O can flesh Second this fiery strain? Not always; O no no! We cannot live this life out; sometimes we must weary And in this darksome world what comfort can I find? Down this darksome world c?mfort wh?re can I find When ’ts light I quenched; its rose, time’s one rich rose, my hand, By her bloom, fast by her fresh, her fleec?d bloom, Hideous dashed down, leaving earth a winter withering With no now, no Gwenvrewi.
I must miss her most That might have spared her were it but for passion-sake.
Yes, To hunger and not have, y?t hope ?n for, to storm and strive and Be at every assault fresh foiled, worse flung, deeper disappointed, The turmoil and the torment, it has, I swear, a sweetness, Keeps a kind of joy in it, a zest, an edge, an ecstasy, Next after sweet success.
I am not left even this; I all my being have hacked in half with her neck: one part, Reason, selfdisposal, choice of better or worse way, Is corpse now, cannot change; my other self, this soul, Life’s quick, this k?nd, this k?en self-feeling, With dreadful distillation of thoughts sour as blood, Must all day long taste murder.
What do n?w then? Do? Nay, Deed-bound I am; one deed treads all down here cramps all doing.
What do? Not yield, Not hope, not pray; despair; ay, that: brazen despair out, Brave all, and take what comes—as here this rabble is come, Whose bloods I reck no more of, no more rank with hers Than sewers with sacred oils.
Mankind, that mobs, comes.
Come! Enter a crowd, among them Teryth, Gwenlo, Beuno.
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After Winefred’s raising from the dead and the breaking out of the fountain.
BEUNO.
O now while skies are blue, now while seas are salt, While rushy rains shall fall or brooks shall fleet from fountains, While sick men shall cast sighs, of sweet health all despairing, While blind men’s eyes shall thirst after daylight, draughts of daylight, Or deaf ears shall desire that lipmusic that ’s lost upon them, While cripples are, while lepers, dancers in dismal limb-dance, Fallers in dreadful frothpits, waterfearers wild, Stone, palsy, cancer, cough, lung wasting, womb not bearing, Rupture, running sores, what more? in brief; in burden, As long as men are mortal and God merciful, So long to this sweet spot, this leafy lean-over, This Dry Dene, now no longer dry nor dumb, but moist and musical With the uproll and the downcarol of day and night delivering Water, which keeps thy name, (for not in r?ck wr?tten, But in pale water, frail water, wild rash and reeling water, That will not wear a print, that will not stain a pen, Thy venerable record, virgin, is recorded).
Here to this holy well shall pilgrimages be, And not from purple Wales only nor from elmy England, But from beyond seas, Erin, France and Flanders, everywhere, Pilgrims, still pilgrims, m?re p?lgrims, still more poor pilgrims.
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What sights shall be when some that swung, wretches, on crutches Their crutches shall cast from them, on heels of air departing, Or they go rich as roseleaves hence that loathsome c?me hither! Not now to n?me even Those dearer, more divine boons whose haven the heart is.
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As sure as what is most sure, sure as that spring primroses Shall new-dapple next year, sure as to-morrow morning, Amongst come-back-again things, th?ngs with a revival, things with a recovery, Thy name… .
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Written by Amy Lowell | Create an image from this poem

In Darkness

 Must all of worth be travailled for, and those
Life's brightest stars rise from a troubled sea?
Must years go by in sad uncertainty
Leaving us doubting whose the conquering blows,
Are we or Fate the victors? Time which shows
All inner meanings will reveal, but we
Shall never know the upshot.
Ours to be Wasted with longing, shattered in the throes, The agonies of splendid dreams, which day Dims from our vision, but each night brings back; We strive to hold their grandeur, and essay To be the thing we dream.
Sudden we lack The flash of insight, life grows drear and gray, And hour follows hour, nerveless, slack.
Written by Omar Khayyam | Create an image from this poem

A potter at his work I chanced to see,

A potter at his work I chanced to see,
Pounding some earth and shreds of pottery;
I looked with eyes of insight, and methought
'Twas Adam's dust with which he made so free!

Book: Reflection on the Important Things