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Best Famous Sustaining Poems

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Written by Kahlil Gibran | Create an image from this poem

Two Infants II

 A prince stood on the balcony of his palace addressing a great multitude summoned for the occasion and said, "Let me offer you and this whole fortunate country my congratulations upon the birth of a new prince who will carry the name of my noble family, and of whom you will be justly proud. He is the new bearer of a great and illustrious ancestry, and upon him depends the brilliant future of this realm. Sing and be merry!" The voices of the throngs, full of joy and thankfulness, flooded the sky with exhilarating song, welcoming the new tyrant who would affix the yoke of oppression to their necks by ruling the weak with bitter authority, and exploiting their bodies and killing their souls. For that destiny, the people were singing and drinking ecstatically to the heady of the new Emir. 

Another child entered life and that kingdom at the same time. While the crowds were glorifying the strong and belittling themselves by singing praise to a potential despot, and while the angels of heaven were weeping over the people's weakness and servitude, a sick woman was thinking. She lived in an old, deserted hovel and, lying in her hard bed beside her newly born infant wrapped with ragged swaddles, was starving to death. She was a penurious and miserable young wife neglected by humanity; her husband had fallen into the trap of death set by the prince's oppression, leaving a solitary woman to whom God had sent, that night, a tiny companion to prevent her from working and sustaining life. 

As the mass dispersed and silence was restored to the vicinity, the wretched woman placed the infant on her lap and looked into his face and wept as if she were to baptize him with tears. And with a hunger weakened voice she spoke to the child saying, "Why have you left the spiritual world and come to share with me the bitterness of earthly life? Why have you deserted the angels and the spacious firmament and come to this miserable land of humans, filled with agony, oppression, and heartlessness? I have nothing to give you except tears; will you be nourished on tears instead of milk? I have no silk clothes to put on you; will my naked, shivering arms give you warmth? The little animals graze in the pasture and return safely to their shed; and the small birds pick the seeds and sleep placidly between the branches. But you, my beloved, have naught save a loving but destitute mother." 

Then she took the infant to her withered breast and clasped her arms around him as if wanting to join the two bodies in one, as before. She lifted her burning eyes slowly toward heaven and cried, "God! Have mercy on my unfortunate countrymen!" 

At that moment the clouds floated from the face of the moon, whose beams penetrated the transom of that poor home and fell upon two corpses.


Written by Percy Bysshe Shelley | Create an image from this poem

Julian and Maddalo (excerpt)

 I rode one evening with Count Maddalo 
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
Of hillocks, heap'd from ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,
Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,
Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
Abandons; and no other object breaks
The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes
Broken and unrepair'd, and the tide makes
A narrow space of level sand thereon,
Where 'twas our wont to ride while day went down.
This ride was my delight. I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:
And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
More barren than its billows; and yet more
Than all, with a remember'd friend I love
To ride as then I rode; for the winds drove
The living spray along the sunny air
Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,
Stripp'd to their depths by the awakening north;
And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth
Harmonizing with solitude, and sent
Into our hearts aëreal merriment.
So, as we rode, we talk'd; and the swift thought,
Winging itself with laughter, linger'd not,
But flew from brain to brain--such glee was ours,
Charg'd with light memories of remember'd hours,
None slow enough for sadness: till we came
Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame.
This day had been cheerful but cold, and now
The sun was sinking, and the wind also.
Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be
Talk interrupted with such raillery
As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn
The thoughts it would extinguish: 'twas forlorn,
Yet pleasing, such as once, so poets tell,
The devils held within the dales of Hell
Concerning God, freewill and destiny:
Of all that earth has been or yet may be,
All that vain men imagine or believe,
Or hope can paint or suffering may achieve,
We descanted, and I (for ever still
Is it not wise to make the best of ill?)
Argu'd against despondency, but pride
Made my companion take the darker side.
The sense that he was greater than his kind
Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind
By gazing on its own exceeding light.
Meanwhile the sun paus'd ere it should alight,
Over the horizon of the mountains--Oh,
How beautiful is sunset, when the glow
Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee,
Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!
Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers
Of cities they encircle! It was ours
To stand on thee, beholding it: and then,
Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men
Were waiting for us with the gondola.
As those who pause on some delightful way
Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood
Looking upon the evening, and the flood
Which lay between the city and the shore,
Pav'd with the image of the sky.... The hoar
And aëry Alps towards the North appear'd
Through mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark rear'd
Between the East and West; and half the sky
Was roof'd with clouds of rich emblazonry
Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew
Down the steep West into a wondrous hue
Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent
Where the swift sun yet paus'd in his descent
Among the many-folded hills: they were
Those famous Euganean hills, which bear,
As seen from Lido thro' the harbour piles,
The likeness of a clump of peakèd isles--
And then--as if the Earth and Sea had been
Dissolv'd into one lake of fire, were seen
Those mountains towering as from waves of flame
Around the vaporous sun, from which there came
The inmost purple spirit of light, and made
Their very peaks transparent. "Ere it fade,"
Said my companion, "I will show you soon
A better station"--so, o'er the lagune
We glided; and from that funereal bark
I lean'd, and saw the city, and could mark
How from their many isles, in evening's gleam,
Its temples and its palaces did seem
Like fabrics of enchantment pil'd to Heaven.
I was about to speak, when--"We are even
Now at the point I meant," said Maddalo,
And bade the gondolieri cease to row.
"Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well
If you hear not a deep and heavy bell."
I look'd, and saw between us and the sun
A building on an island; such a one
As age to age might add, for uses vile,
A windowless, deform'd and dreary pile;
And on the top an open tower, where hung
A bell, which in the radiance sway'd and swung;
We could just hear its hoarse and iron tongue:
The broad sun sunk behind it, and it toll'd
In strong and black relief. "What we behold
Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower,"
Said Maddalo, "and ever at this hour
Those who may cross the water, hear that bell
Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell,
To vespers." "As much skill as need to pray
In thanks or hope for their dark lot have they
To their stern Maker," I replied. "O ho!
You talk as in years past," said Maddalo.
" 'Tis strange men change not. You were ever still
Among Christ's flock a perilous infidel,
A wolf for the meek lambs--if you can't swim
Beware of Providence." I look'd on him,
But the gay smile had faded in his eye.
"And such," he cried, "is our mortality,
And this must be the emblem and the sign
Of what should be eternal and divine!
And like that black and dreary bell, the soul,
Hung in a heaven-illumin'd tower, must toll
Our thoughts and our desires to meet below
Round the rent heart and pray--as madmen do
For what? they know not--till the night of death,
As sunset that strange vision, severeth
Our memory from itself, and us from all
We sought and yet were baffled." I recall
The sense of what he said, although I mar
The force of his expressions. The broad star
Of day meanwhile had sunk behind the hill,
And the black bell became invisible,
And the red tower look'd gray, and all between
The churches, ships and palaces were seen
Huddled in gloom;--into the purple sea
The orange hues of heaven sunk silently.
We hardly spoke, and soon the gondola
Convey'd me to my lodgings by the way.

The following morn was rainy, cold and dim:
Ere Maddalo arose, I call'd on him,
And whilst I waited with his child I play'd;
A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made,
A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being,
Graceful without design and unforeseeing,
With eyes--Oh speak not of her eyes!--which seem
Twin mirrors of Italian Heaven, yet gleam
With such deep meaning, as we never see
But in the human countenance: with me
She was a special favourite: I had nurs'd
Her fine and feeble limbs when she came first
To this bleak world; and she yet seem'd to know
On second sight her ancient playfellow,
Less chang'd than she was by six months or so;
For after her first shyness was worn out
We sate there, rolling billiard balls about,
When the Count enter'd. Salutations past--
"The word you spoke last night might well have cast
A darkness on my spirit--if man be
The passive thing you say, I should not see
Much harm in the religions and old saws
(Though I may never own such leaden laws)
Which break a teachless nature to the yoke:
Mine is another faith"--thus much I spoke
And noting he replied not, added: "See
This lovely child, blithe, innocent and free;
She spends a happy time with little care,
While we to such sick thoughts subjected are
As came on you last night. It is our will
That thus enchains us to permitted ill.
We might be otherwise. We might be all
We dream of happy, high, majestical.
Where is the love, beauty, and truth we seek
But in our mind? and if we were not weak
Should we be less in deed than in desire?"
"Ay, if we were not weak--and we aspire
How vainly to be strong!" said Maddalo:
"You talk Utopia." "It remains to know,"
I then rejoin'd, "and those who try may find
How strong the chains are which our spirit bind;
Brittle perchance as straw.... We are assur'd
Much may be conquer'd, much may be endur'd,
Of what degrades and crushes us. We know
That we have power over ourselves to do
And suffer--what, we know not till we try;
But something nobler than to live and die:
So taught those kings of old philosophy
Who reign'd, before Religion made men blind;
And those who suffer with their suffering kind
Yet feel their faith, religion." "My dear friend,"
Said Maddalo, "my judgement will not bend
To your opinion, though I think you might
Make such a system refutation-tight
As far as words go. I knew one like you
Who to this city came some months ago,
With whom I argu'd in this sort, and he
Is now gone mad--and so he answer'd me--
Poor fellow! but if you would like to go
We'll visit him, and his wild talk will show
How vain are such aspiring theories."
"I hope to prove the induction otherwise,
And that a want of that true theory, still,
Which seeks a 'soul of goodness' in things ill
Or in himself or others, has thus bow'd
His being. There are some by nature proud,
Who patient in all else demand but this--
To love and be belov'd with gentleness;
And being scorn'd, what wonder if they die
Some living death? this is not destiny
But man's own wilful ill."

As thus I spoke
Servants announc'd the gondola, and we
Through the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea
Sail'd to the island where the madhouse stands.
Written by Denise Duhamel | Create an image from this poem

Kinky

 They decide to exchange heads.
Barbie squeezes the small opening under her chin 
over Ken's bulging neck socket. His wide jaw line jostles
atop his girlfriend's body, loosely,
like one of those novelty dogs
destined to gaze from the back windows of cars.
The two dolls chase each other around the orange Country Camper 
unsure what they'll do when they're within touching distance. 
Ken wants to feel Barbie's toes between his lips, 
take off one of her legs and force his whole arm inside her.
With only the vaguest suggestion of genitals,
all the alluring qualities they possess as fashion dolls, 
up until now, have done neither of them much good. 
But suddenly Barbie is excited looking at her own body 
under the weight of Ken's face. He is part circus freak,
part thwarted hermaphrodite. And she is imagining 
she is somebody else-- maybe somebody middle class and ordinary,
maybe another teenage model being caught in a scandal.

The night had begun with Barbie getting angry 
at finding Ken's blow up doll, folded and stuffed
under the couch. He was defensive and ashamed, especially about 
not having the breath to inflate her. But after a round
of pretend-tears, Barbie and Ken vowed to try
to make their relationship work. With their good memories 
as sustaining as good food, they listened to late-night radio 
talk shows, one featuring Doctor Ruth. When all else fails,
just hold each other, the small sex therapist crooned. 
Barbie and Ken, on cue, groped in the dark, 
their interchangeable skin glowing, the color of Band-Aids. 
Then, they let themselves go-- Soon Barbie was begging Ken 
to try on her spandex miniskirt. She showed him how 
to pivot as though he was on a runway. Ken begged 
to tie Barbie onto his yellow surfboard and spin her 
on the kitcen table until she grew dizzy. Anything,
anything, they both said to the other's requests,
their mirrored desires bubbling from the most unlikely places.
Written by Rg Gregory | Create an image from this poem

bird of fire - a caution

 the dream of the white bird flying
offers a freedom as tasty as nectar
how our lips purse to the goddess’s pap
at the want of such swoops through the air

to be rid of the drag on our legs
the sloshing through drudgery and mire
the daily entangling with bramble
the hurt of our hair caught in barbs

when there in the bowl of our eye
that milky-white shaft through the sun
pierces old canopies revealing
heights that have never been deemed

then to be up and away forgetting
icarus has been there before us
white heat is the worst of all fires
we’re dust before the dream’s gone cold

there’s no bird doesn’t need its tree
with its leaden roots buried in earth
and the earth needs its water - all
things that fly with their fine-pointed rage

must have cool fruits to come down to
before ecstasy and soaring can yield
the unimaginable answers sustaining
the longings all born are bequeathed
Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

Sierra Kid

 "I've been where it hurts." the Kid 

He becomes Sierra Kid

 I passed Slimgullion, Morgan Mine, 
 Camp Seco, and the rotting Lode. 
 Dark walls of sugar pine --, 
 And where I left the road 

 I left myself behind; 
 Talked to no one, thought 
 Of nothing. When my luck ran out 
 Lived on berries, nuts, bleached grass. 
 Driven by the wind 
 Through great Sonora pass, 

 I found an Indian's teeth; 
 Turned and climbed again 
 Without direction, compass, path, 
 Without a way of coming down, 
 Until I stopped somewhere 
 And gave the place a name. 

 I called the forests mine; 
 Whatever I could hear 
 I took to be a voice: a man 
 Was something I would never hear.

He faces his second winter in the Sierra

 A hard brown bug, maybe a beetle, 
 Packing a ball of sparrow **** -- 
 What shall I call it? 
 **** beetle? Why's it pushing here 
 At this great height in the thin air 
 With its ridiculous waddle 

 Up the hard side of Hard Luck Hill? 
 And the furred thing that frightened me -- 
 Bobcat, coyote, wild dog -- 
 Flat eyes in winter bush, stiff tail 
 Holding his ground, a rotted log. 
 Grass snakes that wouldn't die, 

 And night hawks hanging on the rim 
 Of what was mine. I know them now; 
 They have absorbed a mind 
 Which must endure the freezing snow 
 They endure and, freezing, find 
 A clear sustaining stream.

He learns to lose

 She was afraid 
 Of everything, 
 The little Digger girl. 
 Pah Utes had killed 
 Her older brother 
 Who may have been her lover 
 The way she cried 
 Over his ring -- 

 The heavy brass 
 On the heavy hand. 
 She carried it for weeks 
 Clenched in her fist 
 As if it might 
 Keep out the loneliness 
 Or the plain fact 
 That he was gone. 

 When the first snows 
 Began to fall 
 She stopped her crying, picked 
 Berries, sweet grass, 
 Mended her clothes 
 And sewed a patchwork shawl. 
 We slept together 
 But did not speak. 

 It may have been 
 The Pah Utes took 
 Her off, perhaps her kin. 
 I came back 
 To find her gone 
 With half the winter left 
 To face alone -- 
 The slow grey dark 

 Moving along 
 The dark tipped grass 
 Between the numbed pines. 
 Night after night 
 For four long months 
 My face to her dark face 
 We two had lain 
 Till the first light.

Civilization comes to Sierra Kid

 They levelled Tater Hill 
 And I was sick. 
 First sun, and the chain saws 
 Coming on; blue haze, 
 Dull blue exhaust 
 Rising, dust rising, and the smell. 

 Moving from their thatched huts 
 The crazed wood rats 
 By the thousand; grouse, spotted quail 
 Abandoning the hills 
 For the sparse trail 
 On which, exposed, I also packed. 

 Six weeks. I went back down 
 Through my own woods 
 Afraid of what I knew they'd done. 
 There, there, an A&P, 
 And not a tree 
 For Miles, and mammoth hills of goods. 

 Fat men in uniforms, 
 Young men in aprons 
 With one face shouting, "He is mad!" 
 I answered: "I am Lincoln, 
 Aaron Burr, 
 The aging son of Appleseed. 

 "I am American 
 And I am cold." 
 But not a one would hear me out. 
 Oh God, what have I seen 
 That was not sold! 
 They shot an old man in the gut.

Mad, dying, Sierra Kid enters the capital

 What have I changed? 
 I unwound burdocks from my hair 
 And scalded stains 
 Of the black grape 
 And hid beneath long underwear 
 The yellowed tape. 

 Who will they find 
 In the dark woods of the dark mind 
 Now I have gone 
 Into the world? 
 Across the blazing civic lawn 
 A shadow's hurled 

 And I must follow. 
 Something slides beneath my vest 
 Like melted tallow, 
 Thick but thin, 
 Burning where it comes to rest 
 On what was skin. 

 Who will they find? 
 A man with no eyes in his head? 
 Or just a mind 
 Calm and alone? 
 Or just a mouth, silent, dead, 
 The lips half gone? 

 Will they presume 
 That someone once was half alive 
 And that the air 
 Was massive where 
 The sickening pyracanthus thrive 
 Staining his tomb? 

 I came to touch 
 The great heart of a dying state. 
 Here is the wound! 
 It makes no sound. 
 All that we learn we learn too late, 
 And it's not much.


Written by Delmore Schwartz | Create an image from this poem

Sonnet Suggested By Homer Chaucer Shakespeare Edgar Allan Poe Paul Vakzy James Joyce Et Al

 Let me not, ever, to the marriage in Cana
Of Galilee admit the slightest sentiment
Of doubt about the astonishing and sustaining manna
Of chance and choice to throw a shadow's element
Of disbelief in truth -- Love is not love
Nor is the love of love its truth in consciousness
If it can be made hesitant by any crow or dove or 
 seeming angel or demon from above or from below
Or made more than it is knows itself to be by the authority
 of any ministry of love.

O no -- it is the choice of chances and the chancing of 
 all choice -- the wine
which was the water may be sickening, unsatisfying or
 sour
A new barbiturate drawn from the fattest flower
That prospers green on Lethe's shore. For every hour
Denies or once again affirms the vow and the ultimate 
 tower
Of aspiration which made Ulysses toil so far away from
 home
And then, for years, strive against every wanton desire,
 sea and fire, to return across the.
 ever-threatening seas
A journey forever far beyond all the vivid eloquence 
 of every poet and all poetry.
Written by Amy Lowell | Create an image from this poem

A Petition

 I pray to be the tool which to your hand
Long use has shaped and moulded till it be
Apt for your need, and, unconsideringly,
You take it for its service. I demand
To be forgotten in the woven strand
Which grows the multi-coloured tapestry
Of your bright life, and through its tissues lie
A hidden, strong, sustaining, grey-toned band.
I wish to dwell around your daylight dreams,
The railing to the stairway of the clouds,
To guard your steps securely up, where streams
A faery moonshine washing pale the crowds
Of pointed stars. Remember not whereby
You mount, protected, to the far-flung sky.
Written by George William Russell | Create an image from this poem

A Last Counsel

 COULD you not in silence borrow
Strength to go from us ungrieving?
All these hours of loving sorrow
Only make more bitter leaving.


You will go forth lonely, thinking
Of the pain you leave behind you;
From the golden sunlight shrinking
For the earthly tears will blind you.


Better, ah, if now we parted
For the little while remaining;
You would seek when broken-hearted
For the mighty heart’s sustaining.


You would go then gladly turning
From our place of wounds and weeping,
With your soul for comfort burning
To the mother-bosom creeping.
Written by Paul Laurence Dunbar | Create an image from this poem

Mare Rubrum

In Life's Red Sea with faith I plant my feet,
[Pg 111]And wait the sound of that sustaining word
Which long ago the men of Israel heard,
When Pharaoh's host behind them, fierce and fleet,
Raged on, consuming with revengeful heat.
Why are the barrier waters still unstirred?—
That struggling faith may die of hope deferred?
Is God not sitting in His ancient seat?
The billows swirl above my trembling limbs,
And almost chill my anxious heart to doubt
And disbelief, long conquered and defied.
But tho' the music of my hopeful hymns
Is drowned by curses of the raging rout,
No voice yet bids th' opposing waves divide!
Written by George William Russell | Create an image from this poem

Momentary

 THE SWEETEST song was ever sung
 May soothe you but a little while:
The gayest music ever rung
 Shall yield you but a fleeting smile.


The well I digged you soon shall pass:
 You may but rest with me an hour:
Yet drink, I offer you the glass,
 A moment of sustaining power,


And give to you, if it be gain,
 Whether in pleasure or annoy,
To see one elemental pain,
 One light of everlasting joy.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things