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Best Famous Mars Poems

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Written by William Shakespeare | Create an image from this poem

Sonnet 55

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contènts
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room Even in the eyes of all posterity That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise, You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.


Written by David Berman | Create an image from this poem

Self-Portrait At 28

 I know it's a bad title
but I'm giving it to myself as a gift
on a day nearly canceled by sunlight
when the entire hill is approaching
the ideal of Virginia
brochured with goldenrod and loblolly
and I think "at least I have not woken up
with a bloody knife in my hand"
by then having absently wandered
one hundred yards from the house
while still seated in this chair
with my eyes closed.
It is a certain hill the one I imagine when I hear the word "hill" and if the apocalypse turns out to be a world-wide nervous breakdown if our five billion minds collapse at once well I'd call that a surprise ending and this hill would still be beautiful a place I wouldn't mind dying alone or with you.
I am trying to get at something and I want to talk very plainly to you so that we are both comforted by the honesty.
You see there is a window by my desk I stare out when I am stuck though the outdoors has rarely inspired me to write and I don't know why I keep staring at it.
My childhood hasn't made good material either mostly being a mulch of white minutes with a few stand out moments, popping tar bubbles on the driveway in the summer a certain amount of pride at school everytime they called it "our sun" and playing football when the only play was "go out long" are what stand out now.
If squeezed for more information I can remember old clock radios with flipping metal numbers and an entree called Surf and Turf.
As a way of getting in touch with my origins every night I set the alarm clock for the time I was born so that waking up becomes a historical reenactment and the first thing I do is take a reading of the day and try to flow with it like when you're riding a mechanical bull and you strain to learn the pattern quickly so you don't inadverantly resist it.
II two I can't remember being born and no one else can remember it either even the doctor who I met years later at a cocktail party.
It's one of the little disappointments that makes you think about getting away going to Holly Springs or Coral Gables and taking a room on the square with a landlady whose hands are scored by disinfectant, telling the people you meet that you are from Alaska, and listen to what they have to say about Alaska until you have learned much more about Alaska than you ever will about Holly Springs or Coral Gables.
Sometimes I am buying a newspaper in a strange city and think "I am about to learn what it's like to live here.
" Oftentimes there is a news item about the complaints of homeowners who live beside the airport and I realize that I read an article on this subject nearly once a year and always receive the same image.
I am in bed late at night in my house near the airport listening to the jets fly overhead a strange wife sleeping beside me.
In my mind, the bedroom is an amalgamation of various cold medicine commercial sets (there is always a box of tissue on the nightstand).
I know these recurring news articles are clues, flaws in the design though I haven't figured out how to string them together yet, but I've begun to notice that the same people are dying over and over again, for instance Minnie Pearl who died this year for the fourth time in four years.
III three Today is the first day of Lent and once again I'm not really sure what it is.
How many more years will I let pass before I take the trouble to ask someone? It reminds of this morning when you were getting ready for work.
I was sitting by the space heater numbly watching you dress and when you asked why I never wear a robe I had so many good reasons I didn't know where to begin.
If you were cool in high school you didn't ask too many questions.
You could tell who'd been to last night's big metal concert by the new t-shirts in the hallway.
You didn't have to ask and that's what cool was: the ability to deduct to know without asking.
And the pressure to simulate coolness means not asking when you don't know, which is why kids grow ever more stupid.
A yearbook's endpages, filled with promises to stay in touch, stand as proof of the uselessness of a teenager's promise.
Not like I'm dying for a letter from the class stoner ten years on but.
.
.
Do you remember the way the girls would call out "love you!" conveniently leaving out the "I" as if they didn't want to commit to their own declarations.
I agree that the "I" is a pretty heavy concept and hope you won't get uncomfortable if I should go into some deeper stuff here.
IV four There are things I've given up on like recording funny answering machine messages.
It's part of growing older and the human race as a group has matured along the same lines.
It seems our comedy dates the quickest.
If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes I hope you won't be insulted if I say you're trying too hard.
Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live seem slow-witted and obvious now.
It's just that our advances are irrepressible.
Nowadays little kids can't even set up lemonade stands.
It makes people too self-conscious about the past, though try explaining that to a kid.
I'm not saying it should be this way.
All this new technology will eventually give us new feelings that will never completely displace the old ones leaving everyone feeling quite nervous and split in two.
We will travel to Mars even as folks on Earth are still ripping open potato chip bags with their teeth.
Why? I don't have the time or intelligence to make all the connections like my friend Gordon (this is a true story) who grew up in Braintree Massachusetts and had never pictured a brain snagged in a tree until I brought it up.
He'd never broken the name down to its parts.
By then it was too late.
He had moved to Coral Gables.
V five The hill out my window is still looking beautiful suffused in a kind of gold national park light and it seems to say, I'm sorry the world could not possibly use another poem about Orpheus but I'm available if you're not working on a self-portrait or anything.
I'm watching my dog have nightmares, twitching and whining on the office floor and I try to imagine what beast has cornered him in the meadow where his dreams are set.
I'm just letting the day be what it is: a place for a large number of things to gather and interact -- not even a place but an occasion a reality for real things.
Friends warned me not to get too psychedelic or religious with this piece: "They won't accept it if it's too psychedelic or religious," but these are valid topics and I'm the one with the dog twitching on the floor possibly dreaming of me that part of me that would beat a dog for no good reason no reason that a dog could see.
I am trying to get at something so simple that I have to talk plainly so the words don't disfigure it and if it turns out that what I say is untrue then at least let it be harmless like a leaky boat in the reeds that is bothering no one.
VI six I can't trust the accuracy of my own memories, many of them having blended with sentimental telephone and margarine commercials plainly ruined by Madison Avenue though no one seems to call the advertising world "Madison Avenue" anymore.
Have they moved? Let's get an update on this.
But first I have some business to take care of.
I walked out to the hill behind our house which looks positively Alaskan today and it would be easier to explain this if I had a picture to show you but I was with our young dog and he was running through the tall grass like running through the tall grass is all of life together until a bird calls or he finds a beer can and that thing fills all the space in his head.
You see, his mind can only hold one thought at a time and when he finally hears me call his name he looks up and cocks his head and for a single moment my voice is everything: Self-portrait at 28.
Written by Robert Seymour Bridges | Create an image from this poem

From The Testament of Beauty

 'Twas at that hour of beauty when the setting sun
squandereth his cloudy bed with rosy hues, to flood
his lov'd works as in turn he biddeth them Good-night;
and all the towers and temples and mansions of men
face him in bright farewell, ere they creep from their pomp
naked beneath the darkness;- while to mortal eyes
'tis given, ifso they close not of fatigue, nor strain
at lamplit tasks-'tis given, as for a royal boon
to beggarly outcasts in homeless vigil, to watch
where uncurtain's behind the great windows of space
Heav'n's jewel'd company circleth unapproachably-
'Twas at sunset that I, fleeing to hide my soul
in refuge of beauty from a mortal distress,
walk'd alone with the Muse in her garden of thought,
discoursing at liberty with the mazy dreams
that came wavering pertinaciously about me; as when
the small bats, issued from their hangings, flitter o'erhead
thru' the summer twilight, with thin cries to and fro
hunting in muffled flight atween the stars and flowers.
Then fell I in strange delusion, illusion strange to tell; for as a man who lyeth fast asleep in his bed may dream he waketh, and that he walketh upright pursuing some endeavour in full conscience-so 'twas with me; but contrawise; for being in truth awake methought I slept and dreamt; and in thatt dream methought I was telling a dream; nor telling was I as one who, truly awaked from a true sleep, thinketh to tell his dream to a friend, but for his scant remembrances findeth no token of speech-it was not so with me; for my tale was my dream and my dream the telling, and I remember wondring the while I told it how I told it so tellingly.
And yet now 'twould seem that Reason inveighed me with her old orderings; as once when she took thought to adjust theology, peopling the inane that vex'd her between God and man with a hierarchy of angels; like those asteroids wherewith she later fill'd the gap 'twixt Jove and Mars.
Verily by Beauty it is that we come as WISDOM, yet not by Reason at Beauty; and now with many words pleasing myself betimes I am fearing lest in the end I play the tedious orator who maundereth on for lack of heart to make an end of his nothings.
Wherefor as when a runner who hath run his round handeth his staff away, and is glad of his rest, here break I off, knowing the goal was not for me the while I ran on telling of what cannot be told.
For not the Muse herself can tell of Goddes love; which cometh to the child from the Mother's embrace, an Idea spacious as the starry firmament's inescapable infinity of radiant gaze, that fadeth only as it outpasseth mortal sight: and this direct contact is 't with eternities, this springtide miracle of the soul's nativity that oft hath set philosophers adrift in dream; which thing Christ taught, when he set up a little child to teach his first Apostles and to accuse their pride, saying, 'Unless ye shall receive it as a child, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.
' So thru'out all his young mental apprenticehood the child of very simplicity, and in the grace and beauteous attitude of infantine wonder, is apt to absorb Ideas in primal purity, and by the assimilation of thatt immortal food may build immortal life; but ever with the growth of understanding, as the sensible images are more and more corrupt, troubled by questioning thought, or with vainglory alloy'd, 'tis like enought the boy in prospect of his manhood wil hav cast to th' winds his Baptism with his Babyhood; nor might he escape the fall of Ev'ryman, did not a second call of nature's Love await him to confirm his Faith or to revoke him if he is whollylapsed therefrom.
And so mighty is this second vision, which cometh in puberty of body and adolescence of mind that, forgetting his Mother, he calleth it 'first Love'; for it mocketh at suasion or stubbornness of heart, as the oceantide of the omnipotent Pleasur of God, flushing all avenues of life, and unawares by thousandfold approach forestalling its full flood with divination of the secret contacts of Love,-- of faintest ecstasies aslumber in Nature's calm, like thought in a closed book, where some poet long since sang his throbbing passion to immortal sleep-with coy tenderness delicat as the shifting hues that sanctify the silent dawn with wonder-gleams, whose evanescence is the seal of their glory, consumed in self-becoming of eternity; til every moment as it flyeth, cryeth 'Seize! Seize me ere I die! I am the Life of Life.
' 'Tis thus by near approach to an eternal presence man's heart with divine furor kindled and possess'd falleth in blind surrender; and finding therewithal in fullest devotion the full reconcilement betwixt his animal and spiritual desires, such welcome hour of bliss standeth for certain pledge of happiness perdurable: and coud he sustain this great enthusiasm, then the unbounded promise would keep fulfilment; since the marriage of true minds is thatt once fabled garden, amidst of which was set the single Tree that bore such med'cinable fruit that if man ate thereof he should liv for ever.
Friendship is in loving rather than in being lov'd, which is its mutual benediction and recompense; and tho' this be, and tho' love is from lovers learn'd, it springeth none the less from the old essence of self.
No friendless man ('twas well said) can be truly himself; what a man looketh for in his friend and findeth, and loving self best, loveth better than himself, is his own better self, his live lovable idea, flowering by expansion in the loves of his life.
And in the nobility of our earthly friendships we hav al grades of attainment, and the best may claim perfection of kind; and so, since ther be many bonds other than breed (friendships of lesser motiv, found even in the brutes) and since our politick is based on actual association of living men, 'twil come that the spiritual idea of Friendship, the huge vastidity of its essence, is fritter'd away in observation of the usual habits of men; as happ'd with the great moralist, where his book saith that ther can be no friendship betwixt God and man because of their unlimited disparity.
From this dilemma of pagan thought, this poison of faith, Man-soul made glad escape in the worship of Christ; for his humanity is God's Personality, and communion with him is the life of the soul.
Of which living ideas (when in the struggle of thought harden'd by language they became symbols of faith) Reason builded her maze, wherefrom none should escape, wandering intent to map and learn her tortuous clews, chanting their clerkly creed to the high-echoing stones of their hand-fashion'd temple: but the Wind of heav'n bloweth where it listeth, and Christ yet walketh the earth, and talketh still as with those two disciples once on the road to Emmaus-where they walk and are sad; whose vision of him then was his victory over death, thatt resurrection which all his lovers should share, who in loving him had learn'd the Ethick of happiness; whereby they too should come where he was ascended to reign over men's hearts in the Kingdom of God.
Our happiest earthly comradeships hold a foretaste of the feast of salvation and by thatt virtue in them provoke desire beyond them to out-reach and surmount their humanity in some superhumanity and ultimat perfection: which, howe'ever 'tis found or strangeley imagin'd, answereth to the need of each and pulleth him instinctivly as to a final cause.
Thus unto all who hav found their high ideal in Christ, Christ is to them the essence discern'd or undeiscern'd of all their human friendships; and each lover of him and of his beauty must be as a bud on the Vine and hav participation in him; for Goddes love is unescapable as nature's environment, which if a man ignore or think to thrust it off he is the ill-natured fool that runneth blindly on death.
This Individualism is man's true Socialism.
This is the rife Idea whose spiritual beauty multiplieth in communion to transcendant might.
This is thatt excelent way whereon if we wil walk all things shall be added unto us-thatt Love which inspired the wayward Visionary in his doctrinal ode to the three christian Graces, the Church's first hymn and only deathless athanasian creed,--the which 'except a man believe he cannot be saved.
' This is the endearing bond whereby Christ's company yet holdeth together on the truth of his promise that he spake of his grat pity and trust in man's love, 'Lo, I am with you always ev'n to the end of the world.
' Truly the Soul returneth the body's loving where it hath won it.
.
.
and God so loveth the world.
.
.
and in the fellowship of the friendship of Christ God is seen as the very self-essence of love, Creator and mover of all as activ Lover of all, self-express'd in not-self, mind and body, mother and child, 'twixt lover and loved, God and man: but ONE ETERNAL in the love of Beauty and in the selfhood of Love.
Written by Derek Walcott | Create an image from this poem

After The Storm

 There are so many islands! 
As many islands as the stars at night 
on that branched tree from which meteors are shaken 
like falling fruit around the schooner Flight.
But things must fall,and so it always was, on one hand Venus,on the other Mars; fall,and are one,just as this earth is one island in archipelagoes of stars.
My first friend was the sea.
Now,is my last.
I stop talking now.
I work,then I read, cotching under a lantern hooked to the mast.
I try to forget what happiness was, and when that don't work,I study the stars.
Sometimes is just me,and the soft-scissored foam as the deck turn white and the moon open a cloud like a door,and the light over me is a road in white moonlight taking me home.
Shabine sang to you from the depths of the sea.
Written by Allen Ginsberg | Create an image from this poem

September On Jessore Road

 Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
Noplace to **** but sand channel ruts

Millions of fathers in rain
Millions of mothers in pain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of sisters nowhere to go

One Million aunts are dying for bread
One Million uncles lamenting the dead
Grandfather millions homeless and sad
Grandmother millions silently mad

Millions of daughters walk in the mud
Millions of children wash in the flood
A Million girls vomit & groan
Millions of families hopeless alone

Millions of souls nineteenseventyone
homeless on Jessore road under grey sun
A million are dead, the million who can
Walk toward Calcutta from East Pakistan

Taxi September along Jessore Road
Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal load
past watery fields thru rain flood ruts
Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof huts

Wet processions Families walk
Stunted boys big heads don't talk
Look bony skulls & silent round eyes
Starving black angels in human disguise

Mother squats weeping & points to her sons
Standing thin legged like elderly nuns
small bodied hands to their mouths in prayer
Five months small food since they settled there

on one floor mat with small empty pot
Father lifts up his hands at their lot
Tears come to their mother's eye
Pain makes mother Maya cry

Two children together in palmroof shade
Stare at me no word is said
Rice ration, lentils one time a week
Milk powder for warweary infants meek

No vegetable money or work for the man
Rice lasts four days eat while they can
Then children starve three days in a row
and vomit their next food unless they eat slow.
On Jessore road Mother wept at my knees Bengali tongue cried mister Please Identity card torn up on the floor Husband still waits at the camp office door Baby at play I was washing the flood Now they won't give us any more food The pieces are here in my celluloid purse Innocent baby play our death curse Two policemen surrounded by thousands of boys Crowded waiting their daily bread joys Carry big whistles & long bamboo sticks to whack them in line They play hungry tricks Breaking the line and jumping in front Into the circle sneaks one skinny runt Two brothers dance forward on the mud stage Teh gaurds blow their whistles & chase them in rage Why are these infants massed in this place Laughing in play & pushing for space Why do they wait here so cheerful & dread Why this is the House where they give children bread The man in the bread door Cries & comes out Thousands of boys and girls Take up his shout Is it joy? is it prayer? "No more bread today" Thousands of Children at once scream "Hooray!" Run home to tents where elders await Messenger children with bread from the state No bread more today! & and no place to squat Painful baby, sick **** he has got.
Malnutrition skulls thousands for months Dysentery drains bowels all at once Nurse shows disease card Enterostrep Suspension is wanting or else chlorostrep Refugee camps in hospital shacks Newborn lay naked on mother's thin laps Monkeysized week old Rheumatic babe eye Gastoenteritis Blood Poison thousands must die September Jessore Road rickshaw 50,000 souls in one camp I saw Rows of bamboo huts in the flood Open drains, & wet families waiting for food Border trucks flooded, food cant get past, American Angel machine please come fast! Where is Ambassador Bunker today? Are his Helios machinegunning children at play? Where are the helicopters of U.
S.
AID? Smuggling dope in Bangkok's green shade.
Where is America's Air Force of Light? Bombing North Laos all day and all night? Where are the President's Armies of Gold? Billionaire Navies merciful Bold? Bringing us medicine food and relief? Napalming North Viet Nam and causing more grief? Where are our tears? Who weeps for the pain? Where can these families go in the rain? Jessore Road's children close their big eyes Where will we sleep when Our Father dies? Whom shall we pray to for rice and for care? Who can bring bread to this **** flood foul'd lair? Millions of children alone in the rain! Millions of children weeping in pain! Ring O ye tongues of the world for their woe Ring out ye voices for Love we don't know Ring out ye bells of electrical pain Ring in the conscious of America brain How many children are we who are lost Whose are these daughters we see turn to ghost? What are our souls that we have lost care? Ring out ye musics and weep if you dare-- Cries in the mud by the thatch'd house sand drain Sleeps in huge pipes in the wet ****-field rain waits by the pump well, Woe to the world! whose children still starve in their mother's arms curled.
Is this what I did to myself in the past? What shall I do Sunil Poet I asked? Move on and leave them without any coins? What should I care for the love of my loins? What should we care for our cities and cars? What shall we buy with our Food Stamps on Mars? How many millions sit down in New York & sup this night's table on bone & roast pork? How many millions of beer cans are tossed in Oceans of Mother? How much does She cost? Cigar gasolines and asphalt car dreams Stinking the world and dimming star beams-- Finish the war in your breast with a sigh Come tast the tears in your own Human eye Pity us millions of phantoms you see Starved in Samsara on planet TV How many millions of children die more before our Good Mothers perceive the Great Lord? How many good fathers pay tax to rebuild Armed forces that boast the children they've killed? How many souls walk through Maya in pain How many babes in illusory pain? How many families hollow eyed lost? How many grandmothers turning to ghost? How many loves who never get bread? How many Aunts with holes in their head? How many sisters skulls on the ground? How many grandfathers make no more sound? How many fathers in woe How many sons nowhere to go? How many daughters nothing to eat? How many uncles with swollen sick feet? Millions of babies in pain Millions of mothers in rain Millions of brothers in woe Millions of children nowhere to go New York, November 14-16, 1971


Written by William Butler Yeats | Create an image from this poem

Supernatural Songs

 I.
Ribh at the Tomb of Baile and Aillinn Because you have found me in the pitch-dark night With open book you ask me what I do.
Mark and digest my tale, carry it afar To those that never saw this tonsured head Nor heard this voice that ninety years have cracked.
Of Baile and Aillinn you need not speak, All know their tale, all know what leaf and twig, What juncture of the apple and the yew, Surmount their bones; but speak what none have heard.
The miracle that gave them such a death Transfigured to pure substance what had once Been bone and sinew; when such bodies join There is no touching here, nor touching there, Nor straining joy, but whole is joined to whole; For the intercourse of angels is a light Where for its moment both seem lost, consumed.
Here in the pitch-dark atmosphere above The trembling of the apple and the yew, Here on the anniversary of their death, The anniversary of their first embrace, Those lovers, purified by tragedy, Hurry into each other's arms; these eyes, By water, herb and solitary prayer Made aquiline, are open to that light.
Though somewhat broken by the leaves, that light Lies in a circle on the grass; therein I turn the pages of my holy book.
II.
Ribh denounces Patrick An abstract Greek absurdity has crazed the man - Recall that masculine Trinity.
Man, woman, child (daughter or son), That's how all natural or supernatural stories run.
Natural and supernatural with the self-same ring are wed.
As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets Godhead, For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said.
Yet all must copy copies, all increase their kind; When the conflagration of their passion sinks, damped by the body or the mind, That juggling nature mounts, her coil in their embraces twined.
The mirror-scaled serpent is multiplicity, But all that run in couples, on earth, in flood or air, share God that is but three, And could beget or bear themselves could they but love as He.
III.
Ribh in Ecstasy What matter that you understood no word! Doubtless I spoke or sang what I had heard In broken sentences.
My soul had found All happiness in its own cause or ground.
Godhead on Godhead in sexual spasm begot Godhead.
Some shadow fell.
My soul forgot Those amorous cries that out of quiet come And must the common round of day resume.
IV.
There There all the barrel-hoops are knit, There all the serpent-tails are bit, There all the gyres converge in one, There all the planets drop in the Sun.
V.
Ribh considers Christian Love insufficient Why should I seek for love or study it? It is of God and passes human wit.
I study hatred with great diligence, For that's a passion in my own control, A sort of besom that can clear the soul Of everything that is not mind or sense.
Why do I hate man, woman or event? That is a light my jealous soul has sent.
From terror and deception freed it can Discover impurities, can show at last How soul may walk when all such things are past, How soul could walk before such things began.
Then my delivered soul herself shall learn A darker knowledge and in hatred turn From every thought of God mankind has had.
Thought is a garment and the soul's a bride That cannot in that trash and tinsel hide: Hatred of God may bring the soul to God.
At stroke of midnight soul cannot endure A bodily or mental furniture.
What can she take until her Master give! Where can she look until He make the show! What can she know until He bid her know! How can she live till in her blood He live! VI.
He and She As the moon sidles up Must she sidle up, As trips the scared moon Away must she trip: 'His light had struck me blind Dared I stop".
She sings as the moon sings: 'I am I, am I; The greater grows my light The further that I fly.
' All creation shivers With that sweet cry.
VII.
What Magic Drum? He holds him from desire, all but stops his breathing lest primordial Motherhood forsake his limbs, the child no longer rest, Drinking joy as it were milk upon his breast.
Through light-obliterating garden foliage what magic drum? Down limb and breast or down that glimmering belly move his mouth and sinewy tongue.
What from the forest came? What beast has licked its young? VIII.
Whence had they come? Eternity is passion, girl or boy Cry at the onset of their sexual joy 'For ever and for ever'; then awake Ignorant what Dramatis personae spake; A passion-driven exultant man sings out Sentences that he has never thought; The Flagellant lashes those submissive loins Ignorant what that dramatist enjoins, What master made the lash.
Whence had they come, The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome? What sacred drama through her body heaved When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived? IX.
The Four Ages of Man He with body waged a fight, But body won; it walks upright.
Then he struggled with the heart; Innocence and peace depart.
Then he struggled with the mind; His proud heart he left behind.
Now his wars on God begin; At stroke of midnight God shall win.
X.
Conjunctions If Jupiter and Saturn meet, What a cop of mummy wheat! The sword's a cross; thereon He died: On breast of Mars the goddess sighed.
XI.
A Needle's Eye 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.
XII.
Meru Civilisation is hooped together, brought Under a mle, under the semblance of peace By manifold illusion; but man's life is thought, And he, despite his terror, cannot cease Ravening through century after century, Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come Into the desolation of reality: Egypt and Greece, good-bye, and good-bye, Rome! Hermits upon Mount Meru or Everest, Caverned in night under the drifted snow, Or where that snow and winter's dreadful blast Beat down upon their naked bodies, know That day brings round the night, that before dawn His glory and his monuments are gone.
Written by Emily Dickinson | Create an image from this poem

Sic transit gloria mundi

 "Sic transit gloria mundi,"
"How doth the busy bee,"
"Dum vivimus vivamus,"
I stay mine enemy!

Oh "veni, vidi, vici!"
Oh caput cap-a-pie!
And oh "memento mori"
When I am far from thee!

Hurrah for Peter Parley!
Hurrah for Daniel Boone!
Three cheers, sir, for the gentleman
Who first observed the moon!

Peter, put up the sunshine;
Patti, arrange the stars;
Tell Luna, tea is waiting,
And call your brother Mars!

Put down the apple, Adam,
And come away with me,
So shalt thou have a pippin
From off my father's tree!

I climb the "Hill of Science,"
I "view the landscape o'er;"
Such transcendental prospect,
I ne'er beheld before!

Unto the Legislature
My country bids me go;
I'll take my india rubbers,
In case the wind should blow!

During my education,
It was announced to me
That gravitation, stumbling,
Fell from an apple tree!

The earth upon an axis
Was once supposed to turn,
By way of a gymnastic
In honor of the sun!

It was the brave Columbus,
A sailing o'er the tide,
Who notified the nations
Of where I would reside!

Mortality is fatal --
Gentility is fine,
Rascality, heroic,
Insolvency, sublime!

Our Fathers being weary,
Laid down on Bunker Hill;
And tho' full many a morning,
Yet they are sleeping still, --

The trumpet, sir, shall wake them,
In dreams I see them rise,
Each with a solemn musket
A marching to the skies!

A coward will remain, Sir,
Until the fight is done;
But an immortal hero
Will take his hat, and run!

Good bye, Sir, I am going;
My country calleth me;
Allow me, Sir, at parting,
To wipe my weeping e'e.
In token of our friendship Accept this "Bonnie Doon," And when the hand that plucked it Hath passed beyond the moon, The memory of my ashes Will consolation be; Then, farewell, Tuscarora, And farewell, Sir, to thee!
Written by William Shakespeare | Create an image from this poem

Not marble nor the guilded monuments (Sonnet 55)

 Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room, Even in the eyes of all posterity That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise, You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.
Written by Robert Browning | Create an image from this poem

Rabbi Ben Ezra

 Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith 'A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!'

Not that, amassing flowers,
Youth sighed 'Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall?'
Not that, admiring stars,
It yearned 'Nor Jove, nor Mars;
Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!'

Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
Poor vaunt of life indeed, Were man but formed to feed On joy, to solely seek and find and feast: Such feasting ended, then As sure an end to men; Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast? Rejoice we are allied To That which doth provide And not partake, effect and not receive! A spark disturbs our clod; Nearer we hold of God Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe.
Then, welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! Be our joys three-parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe! For thence,--a paradox Which comforts while it mocks,-- Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail: What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me: A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.
What is he but a brute Whose flesh has soul to suit, Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play? To man, propose this test-- Thy body at its best, How far can that project thy soul on its lone way? Yet gifts should prove their use: I own the Past profuse Of power each side, perfection every turn: Eyes, ears took in their dole, Brain treasured up the whole; Should not the heart beat once 'How good to live and learn?' Not once beat 'Praise be Thine! I see the whole design, I, who saw power, see now love perfect too: Perfect I call Thy plan: Thanks that I was a man! Maker, remake, complete,--I trust what Thou shalt do!' For pleasant is this flesh; Our soul, in its rose-mesh Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest; Would we some prize might hold To match those manifold Possessions of the brute,--gain most, as we did best! Let us not always say, 'Spite of this flesh to-day I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!' As the bird wings and sings, Let us cry 'All good things Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!' Therefore I summon age To grant youth's heritage, Life's struggle having so far reached its term: Thence shall I pass, approved A man, for aye removed From the developed brute; a god though in the germ.
And I shall thereupon Take rest, ere I be gone Once more on my adventure brave and new: Fearless and unperplexed, When I wage battle next, What weapons to select, what armour to indue.
Youth ended, I shall try My gain or loss thereby; Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold: And I shall weigh the same, Give life its praise or blame: Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.
For note, when evening shuts, A certain moment cuts The deed off, calls the glory from the grey: A whisper from the west Shoots--'Add this to the rest, Take it and try its worth: here dies another day.
' So, still within this life, Though lifted o'er its strife, Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last, This rage was right i' the main, That acquiescence vain: The Future I may face now I have proved the Past.
' For more is not reserved To man, with soul just nerved To act to-morrow what he learns to-day: Here, work enough to watch The Master work, and catch Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.
As it was better, youth Should strive, through acts uncouth, Toward making, than repose on aught found made: So, better, age, exempt From strife, should know, than tempt Further.
Thou waitedst age: wait death nor be afraid! Enough now, if the Right And Good and Infinite Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own With knowledge absolute, Subject to no dispute From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.
Be there, for once and all, Severed great minds from small, Announced to each his station in the Past! Was I, the world arraigned, Were they, my soul disdained, Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last! Now, who shall arbitrate? Ten men love what I hate, Shun what I follow, slight what I receive; Ten, who in ears and eyes Match me: we all surmise, They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe? Not on the vulgar mass Called 'work,' must sentence pass, Things done, that took the eye and had the price; O'er which, from level stand, The low world laid its hand, Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice: But all, the world's coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, So passed in making up the main account; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount: Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped; All I could never be, All, men ignored in me, This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.
Ay, note that Potter's wheel, That metaphor! and feel Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,-- Thou, to whom fools propound, When the wine makes its round, 'Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!' Fool! All that is, at all, Lasts ever, past recall; Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure: What entered into thee, That was, is, and shall be: Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.
He fixed thee mid this dance Of plastic circumstance, This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest: Machinery just meant To give thy soul its bent, Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.
What though the earlier grooves, Which ran the laughing loves Around thy base, no longer pause and press? What though, about thy rim, Skull-things in order grim Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress? Look not thou down but up! To uses of a cup, The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal, The new wine's foaming flow, The Master's lips a-glow! Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what need'st thou with earth's wheel? But I need, now as then, Thee, God, who mouldest men; And since, not even while the whirl was worst, Did I,--to the wheel of life With shapes and colours rife, Bound dizzily,--mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst: So, take and use Thy work: Amend what flaws may lurk, What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim! My times be in Thy hand! Perfect the cup as planned! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!
Written by Rg Gregory | Create an image from this poem

the rest home

 professor piebald
(the oldest man in the home) was meek
at the same time ribald
he clothed his matter (so to speak)
in latin and (was it) greek
it caused no great offence
to nobody did it make sense
to make a rude joke
in languages nobody spoke

once he'd changed the word agenda
at a home's committee meeting to pudenda
this sort of thing was tolerated by the other
inmates (except his younger brother -
a dustman all his life
who'd robbed the professor of his wife
and treated him now with disdainful anger
but to everyone piebald was a stranger)
well agenda/pudenda hardly ranked as humour
but there was rumour
piebald was said to have his eye on
nelly (frail and pretty in a feathery fashion
the sort perhaps to rouse a meek man's passion)
she wouldn't talk to him without a tie on

one such occasion burst the bubble
he spoke (no tie on) she demurred
refusing one further word
and so the trouble
piebald went white all over
muttered about being her lover
then shouted in a rage
(nelly whispered be your age)
i - two headed janus -
now pingo your anus
(less janus - i should have thought - than mars)
and pinched the dear frail lady on the ****
who died a second then exploded
swung a punch so loaded
poor old piebald eared it to the floor
the other old ones in the room
(more excited now than when the flowers came out in bloom)
were rushing pushing to the door

the brother stood across the fallen man
in total icy disdain
you academic lily-livered piss of a gnat
he hissed - and spat
into the piebald twitching face
drew back a pace
when wham - a seething body like a flung cat
lifted upwards into space

the younger brother was butted in the belly
(who staggered back hit head and made a dying fall
leaving a small red zigzag down the wall)
then this sizzling flesh-ball
fell on fluttering nelly
tore at her skirt
ripped other clothes apart
began kissing her fervently on her agenda
te amo te amo te amo te amo
(repeating it as though
it was the finest latin phrase he'd learned by heart)
crying abasing himself to her most wanted gender

she more dazed than hurt
clutching the virgin fragments of her skirt
a simpering victim in the rising clamour
old people now outraged beyond controlling
through the swing doors pushing tumbling rolling
armed with saucepans pokers knives
playing the greatest game in all their lives
attacked without compunction
the frenzied lover at his unction
a poker struck him once across the head
and professor piebald
once meek but ribald
dropped down undoubtedly dead

and even when the horror had subsided
and the arms of justice with their maker were abided
nelly stood rocking in her room
weeping for the heart-ache in her womb
that till then had hardly ever fluttered
and (only occasionally) muttered
if you have your eye on
me - my dear man - put your tie on

the home itself was closed a few days after
the house is riddled still by ribald laughter

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry