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Best Famous World(A) Poems

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Written by Edna St Vincent Millay | Create an image from this poem

Interim

 The room is full of you!—As I came in
And closed the door behind me, all at once
A something in the air, intangible,
Yet stiff with meaning, struck my senses sick!—

Sharp, unfamiliar odors have destroyed
Each other room's dear personality.
The heavy scent of damp, funereal flowers,— The very essence, hush-distilled, of Death— Has strangled that habitual breath of home Whose expiration leaves all houses dead; And wheresoe'er I look is hideous change.
Save here.
Here 'twas as if a weed-choked gate Had opened at my touch, and I had stepped Into some long-forgot, enchanted, strange, Sweet garden of a thousand years ago And suddenly thought, "I have been here before!" You are not here.
I know that you are gone, And will not ever enter here again.
And yet it seems to me, if I should speak, Your silent step must wake across the hall; If I should turn my head, that your sweet eyes Would kiss me from the door.
—So short a time To teach my life its transposition to This difficult and unaccustomed key!— The room is as you left it; your last touch— A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself As saintly—hallows now each simple thing; Hallows and glorifies, and glows between The dust's grey fingers like a shielded light.
There is your book, just as you laid it down, Face to the table,—I cannot believe That you are gone!—Just then it seemed to me You must be here.
I almost laughed to think How like reality the dream had been; Yet knew before I laughed, and so was still.
That book, outspread, just as you laid it down! Perhaps you thought, "I wonder what comes next, And whether this or this will be the end"; So rose, and left it, thinking to return.
Perhaps that chair, when you arose and passed Out of the room, rocked silently a while Ere it again was still.
When you were gone Forever from the room, perhaps that chair, Stirred by your movement, rocked a little while, Silently, to and fro.
.
.
And here are the last words your fingers wrote, Scrawled in broad characters across a page In this brown book I gave you.
Here your hand, Guiding your rapid pen, moved up and down.
Here with a looping knot you crossed a "t," And here another like it, just beyond These two eccentric "e's.
" You were so small, And wrote so brave a hand! How strange it seems That of all words these are the words you chose! And yet a simple choice; you did not know You would not write again.
If you had known— But then, it does not matter,—and indeed If you had known there was so little time You would have dropped your pen and come to me And this page would be empty, and some phrase Other than this would hold my wonder now.
Yet, since you could not know, and it befell That these are the last words your fingers wrote, There is a dignity some might not see In this, "I picked the first sweet-pea to-day.
" To-day! Was there an opening bud beside it You left until to-morrow?—O my love, The things that withered,—and you came not back That day you filled this circle of my arms That now is empty.
(O my empty life!) That day—that day you picked the first sweet-pea,— And brought it in to show me! I recall With terrible distinctness how the smell Of your cool gardens drifted in with you.
I know, you held it up for me to see And flushed because I looked not at the flower, But at your face; and when behind my look You saw such unmistakable intent You laughed and brushed your flower against my lips.
(You were the fairest thing God ever made, I think.
) And then your hands above my heart Drew down its stem into a fastening, And while your head was bent I kissed your hair.
I wonder if you knew.
(Beloved hands! Somehow I cannot seem to see them still.
Somehow I cannot seem to see the dust In your bright hair.
) What is the need of Heaven When earth can be so sweet?—If only God Had let us love,—and show the world the way! Strange cancellings must ink th' eternal books When love-crossed-out will bring the answer right! That first sweet-pea! I wonder where it is.
It seems to me I laid it down somewhere, And yet,—I am not sure.
I am not sure, Even, if it was white or pink; for then 'Twas much like any other flower to me Save that it was the first.
I did not know Then, that it was the last.
If I had known— But then, it does not matter.
Strange how few, After all's said and done, the things that are Of moment.
Few indeed! When I can make Of ten small words a rope to hang the world! "I had you and I have you now no more.
" There, there it dangles,—where's the little truth That can for long keep footing under that When its slack syllables tighten to a thought? Here, let me write it down! I wish to see Just how a thing like that will look on paper! "I had you and I have you now no more.
" O little words, how can you run so straight Across the page, beneath the weight you bear? How can you fall apart, whom such a theme Has bound together, and hereafter aid In trivial expression, that have been So hideously dignified?—Would God That tearing you apart would tear the thread I strung you on! Would God—O God, my mind Stretches asunder on this merciless rack Of imagery! O, let me sleep a while! Would I could sleep, and wake to find me back In that sweet summer afternoon with you.
Summer? Tis summer still by the calendar! How easily could God, if He so willed, Set back the world a little turn or two! Correct its griefs, and bring its joys again! We were so wholly one I had not thought That we could die apart.
I had not thought That I could move,—and you be stiff and still! That I could speak,—and you perforce be dumb! I think our heart-strings were, like warp and woof In some firm fabric, woven in and out; Your golden filaments in fair design Across my duller fibre.
And to-day The shining strip is rent; the exquisite Fine pattern is destroyed; part of your heart Aches in my breast; part of my heart lies chilled In the damp earth with you.
I have been tom In two, and suffer for the rest of me.
What is my life to me? And what am I To life,—a ship whose star has guttered out? A Fear that in the deep night starts awake Perpetually, to find its senses strained Against the taut strings of the quivering air, Awaiting the return of some dread chord? Dark, Dark, is all I find for metaphor; All else were contrast,—save that contrast's wall Is down, and all opposed things flow together Into a vast monotony, where night And day, and frost and thaw, and death and life, Are synonyms.
What now—what now to me Are all the jabbering birds and foolish flowers That clutter up the world? You were my song! Now, let discord scream! You were my flower! Now let the world grow weeds! For I shall not Plant things above your grave—(the common balm Of the conventional woe for its own wound!) Amid sensations rendered negative By your elimination stands to-day, Certain, unmixed, the element of grief; I sorrow; and I shall not mock my truth With travesties of suffering, nor seek To effigy its incorporeal bulk In little wry-faced images of woe.
I cannot call you back; and I desire No utterance of my immaterial voice.
I cannot even turn my face this way Or that, and say, "My face is turned to you"; I know not where you are, I do not know If Heaven hold you or if earth transmute, Body and soul, you into earth again; But this I know:—not for one second's space Shall I insult my sight with visionings Such as the credulous crowd so eager-eyed Beholds, self-conjured, in the empty air.
Let the world wail! Let drip its easy tears! My sorrow shall be dumb! —What do I say? God! God!—God pity me! Am I gone mad That I should spit upon a rosary? Am I become so shrunken? Would to God I too might feel that frenzied faith whose touch Makes temporal the most enduring grief; Though it must walk a while, as is its wont, With wild lamenting! Would I too might weep Where weeps the world and hangs its piteous wreaths For its new dead! Not Truth, but Faith, it is That keeps the world alive.
If all at once Faith were to slacken,—that unconscious faith Which must, I know, yet be the corner-stone Of all believing,—birds now flying fearless Across would drop in terror to the earth; Fishes would drown; and the all-governing reins Would tangle in the frantic hands of God And the worlds gallop headlong to destruction! O God, I see it now, and my sick brain Staggers and swoons! How often over me Flashes this breathlessness of sudden sight In which I see the universe unrolled Before me like a scroll and read thereon Chaos and Doom, where helpless planets whirl Dizzily round and round and round and round, Like tops across a table, gathering speed With every spin, to waver on the edge One instant—looking over—and the next To shudder and lurch forward out of sight— * * * * * * * Ah, I am worn out—I am wearied out— It is too much—I am but flesh and blood, And I must sleep.
Though you were dead again, I am but flesh and blood and I must sleep.


Written by Walt Whitman | Create an image from this poem

Give me the Splendid Silent Sun

 1
GIVE me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling; 
Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard; 
Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows; 
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape; 
Give me fresh corn and wheat—give me serene-moving animals, teaching content;
Give me nights perfectly quiet, as on high plateaus west of the Mississippi, and I looking
 up
 at the
 stars; 
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers, where I can walk
 undisturb’d; 
Give me for marriage a sweet-breath’d woman, of whom I should never tire; 
Give me a perfect child—give me, away, aside from the noise of the world, a rural,
 domestic
 life; 
Give me to warble spontaneous songs, reliev’d, recluse by myself, for my own ears
 only;
Give me solitude—give me Nature—give me again, O Nature, your primal sanities! 
—These, demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement, and rack’d by
 the
 war-strife;) 
These to procure, incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart, 
While yet incessantly asking, still I adhere to my city; 
Day upon day, and year upon year, O city, walking your streets,
Where you hold me enchain’d a certain time, refusing to give me up; 
Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich’d of soul—you give me forever faces; 
(O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries; 
I see my own soul trampling down what it ask’d for.
) 2 Keep your splendid, silent sun; Keep your woods, O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods; Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards; Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields, where the Ninth-month bees hum; Give me faces and streets! give me these phantoms incessant and endless along the trottoirs! Give me interminable eyes! give me women! give me comrades and lovers by the thousand! Let me see new ones every day! let me hold new ones by the hand every day! Give me such shows! give me the streets of Manhattan! Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching—give me the sound of the trumpets and drums! (The soldiers in companies or regiments—some, starting away, flush’d and reckless; Some, their time up, returning, with thinn’d ranks—young, yet very old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;) —Give me the shores and the wharves heavy-fringed with the black ships! O such for me! O an intense life! O full to repletion, and varied! The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me! The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the torch-light procession! The dense brigade, bound for the war, with high piled military wagons following; People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants; Manhattan streets, with their powerful throbs, with the beating drums, as now; The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even the sight of the wounded;) Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus—with varied chorus, and light of the sparkling eyes; Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.
Written by Walt Whitman | Create an image from this poem

Song of the Universal

 1
COME, said the Muse, 
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted, 
Sing me the Universal.
In this broad Earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed Perfection.
By every life a share, or more or less, None born but it is born—conceal’d or unconceal’d, the seed is waiting.
2 Lo! keen-eyed, towering Science! As from tall peaks the Modern overlooking, Successive, absolute fiats issuing.
Yet again, lo! the Soul—above all science; For it, has History gather’d like a husk around the globe; For it, the entire star-myriads roll through the sky.
In spiral roads, by long detours, (As a much-tacking ship upon the sea,) For it, the partial to the permanent flowing, For it, the Real to the Ideal tends.
For it, the mystic evolution; Not the right only justified—what we call evil also justified.
Forth from their masks, no matter what, From the huge, festering trunk—from craft and guile and tears, Health to emerge, and joy—joy universal.
Out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow, Out of the bad majority—the varied, countless frauds of men and States, Electric, antiseptic yet—cleaving, suffusing all, Only the good is universal.
3 Over the mountain growths, disease and sorrow, An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering, High in the purer, happier air.
From imperfection’s murkiest cloud, Darts always forth one ray of perfect light, One flash of Heaven’s glory.
To fashion’s, custom’s discord, To the mad Babel-din, the deafening orgies, Soothing each lull, a strain is heard, just heard, From some far shore, the final chorus sounding.
4 O the blest eyes! the happy hearts! That see—that know the guiding thread so fine, Along the mighty labyrinth! 5 And thou, America! For the Scheme’s culmination—its Thought, and its Reality, For these, (not for thyself,) Thou hast arrived.
Thou too surroundest all; Embracing, carrying, welcoming all, Thou too, by pathways broad and new, To the Ideal tendest.
The measur’d faiths of other lands—the grandeurs of the past, Are not for Thee—but grandeurs of Thine own; Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all, All eligible to all.
All, all for Immortality! Love, like the light, silently wrapping all! Nature’s amelioration blessing all! The blossoms, fruits of ages—orchards divine and certain; Forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual Images ripening.
6 Give me, O God, to sing that thought! Give me—give him or her I love, this quenchless faith In Thy ensemble.
Whatever else withheld, withhold not from us, Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space; Health, peace, salvation universal.
Is it a dream? Nay, but the lack of it the dream, And, failing it, life’s lore and wealth a dream, And all the world a dream.
Written by Edgar Allan Poe | Create an image from this poem

The Lake

 In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less-
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around.
But when the Night had thrown her pall Upon that spot, as upon all, And the mystic wind went by Murmuring in melody- Then- ah then I would awake To the terror of the lone lake.
Yet that terror was not fright, But a tremulous delight- A feeling not the jewelled mine Could teach or bribe me to define- Nor Love- although the Love were thine.
Death was in that poisonous wave, And in its gulf a fitting grave For him who thence could solace bring To his lone imagining- Whose solitary soul could make An Eden of that dim lake.
Written by Friedrich von Schiller | Create an image from this poem

The Gods Of Greece

 Ye in the age gone by,
Who ruled the world--a world how lovely then!--
And guided still the steps of happy men
In the light leading-strings of careless joy!
Ah, flourished then your service of delight!
How different, oh, how different, in the day
When thy sweet fanes with many a wreath were bright,
O Venus Amathusia!

Then, through a veil of dreams
Woven by song, truth's youthful beauty glowed,
And life's redundant and rejoicing streams
Gave to the soulless, soul--where'r they flowed
Man gifted nature with divinity
To lift and link her to the breast of love;
All things betrayed to the initiate eye
The track of gods above!

Where lifeless--fixed afar,
A flaming ball to our dull sense is given,
Phoebus Apollo, in his golden car,
In silent glory swept the fields of heaven!
On yonder hill the Oread was adored,
In yonder tree the Dryad held her home;
And from her urn the gentle Naiad poured
The wavelet's silver foam.
Yon bay, chaste Daphne wreathed, Yon stone was mournful Niobe's mute cell, Low through yon sedges pastoral Syrinx breathed, And through those groves wailed the sweet Philomel, The tears of Ceres swelled in yonder rill-- Tears shed for Proserpine to Hades borne; And, for her lost Adonis, yonder hill Heard Cytherea mourn!-- Heaven's shapes were charmed unto The mortal race of old Deucalion; Pyrrha's fair daughter, humanly to woo, Came down, in shepherd-guise, Latona's son Between men, heroes, gods, harmonious then Love wove sweet links and sympathies divine; Blest Amathusia, heroes, gods, and men, Equals before thy shrine! Not to that culture gay, Stern self-denial, or sharp penance wan! Well might each heart be happy in that day-- For gods, the happy ones, were kin to man! The beautiful alone the holy there! No pleasure shamed the gods of that young race; So that the chaste Camoenae favoring were, And the subduing grace! A palace every shrine; Your sports heroic;--yours the crown Of contests hallowed to a power divine, As rushed the chariots thundering to renown.
Fair round the altar where the incense breathed, Moved your melodious dance inspired; and fair Above victorious brows, the garland wreathed Sweet leaves round odorous hair! The lively Thyrsus-swinger, And the wild car the exulting panthers bore, Announced the presence of the rapture-bringer-- Bounded the Satyr and blithe Faun before; And Maenads, as the frenzy stung the soul, Hymned in their maddening dance, the glorious wine-- As ever beckoned to the lusty bowl The ruddy host divine! Before the bed of death No ghastly spectre stood--but from the porch Of life, the lip--one kiss inhaled the breath, And the mute graceful genius lowered a torch.
The judgment-balance of the realms below, A judge, himself of mortal lineage, held; The very furies at the Thracian's woe, Were moved and music-spelled.
In the Elysian grove The shades renewed the pleasures life held dear: The faithful spouse rejoined remembered love, And rushed along the meads the charioteer; There Linus poured the old accustomed strain; Admetus there Alcestis still could greet; his Friend there once more Orestes could regain, His arrows--Philoctetes! More glorious than the meeds That in their strife with labor nerved the brave, To the great doer of renowned deeds The Hebe and the heaven the Thunderer gave.
Before the rescued rescuer [10] of the dead, Bowed down the silent and immortal host; And the twain stars [11] their guiding lustre shed, On the bark tempest-tossed! Art thou, fair world, no more? Return, thou virgin-bloom on Nature's face; Ah, only on the minstrel's magic shore, Can we the footstep of sweet fable trace! The meadows mourn for the old hallowing life; Vainly we search the earth of gods bereft; Where once the warm and living shapes were rife, Shadows alone are left! Cold, from the north, has gone Over the flowers the blast that killed their May; And, to enrich the worship of the one, A universe of gods must pass away! Mourning, I search on yonder starry steeps, But thee no more, Selene, there I see! And through the woods I call, and o'er the deeps, And--Echo answers me! Deaf to the joys she gives-- Blind to the pomp of which she is possessed-- Unconscious of the spiritual power that lives Around, and rules her--by our bliss unblessed-- Dull to the art that colors or creates, Like the dead timepiece, godless nature creeps Her plodding round, and, by the leaden weights, The slavish motion keeps.
To-morrow to receive New life, she digs her proper grave to-day; And icy moons with weary sameness weave From their own light their fulness and decay.
Home to the poet's land the gods are flown, Light use in them that later world discerns, Which, the diviner leading-strings outgrown, On its own axle turns.
Home! and with them are gone The hues they gazed on and the tones they heard; Life's beauty and life's melody:--alone Broods o'er the desolate void, the lifeless word; Yet rescued from time's deluge, still they throng Unseen the Pindus they were wont to cherish: All, that which gains immortal life in song, To mortal life must perish!


Written by Thomas Moore | Create an image from this poem

The Meeting of the Waters

 There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet 
As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet;
Oh! the last rays of feeling and life must depart, 
Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart.
Yet it was not that nature had shed o'er the scene Her purest of crystal and brightest of green; 'Twas not her soft magic of streamlet or hill, Oh! no, -- it was something more exquisite still.
'Twas that friends, the beloved of my bosom, were near, Who made every dear scene of enchantment more dear, And who felt how the best charms of nature improve, When we see them reflected from looks that we love.
Sweet vale of Avoca! how calm could I rest In thy bosom of shade, with the friends I love best, Where the storms that we feel in this cold world should cease, And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace.
Written by Rupert Brooke | Create an image from this poem

The Fish

 In a cool curving world he lies
And ripples with dark ecstasies.
The kind luxurious lapse and steal Shapes all his universe to feel And know and be; the clinging stream Closes his memory, glooms his dream, Who lips the roots o' the shore, and glides Superb on unreturning tides.
Those silent waters weave for him A fluctuant mutable world and dim, Where wavering masses bulge and gape Mysterious, and shape to shape Dies momently through whorl and hollow, And form and line and solid follow Solid and line and form to dream Fantastic down the eternal stream; An obscure world, a shifting world, Bulbous, or pulled to thin, or curled, Or serpentine, or driving arrows, Or serene slidings, or March narrows.
There slipping wave and shore are one, And weed and mud.
No ray of sun, But glow to glow fades down the deep (As dream to unknown dream in sleep); Shaken translucency illumes The hyaline of drifting glooms; The strange soft-handed depth subdues Drowned colour there, but black to hues, As death to living, decomposes— Red darkness of the heart of roses, Blue brilliant from dead starless skies, And gold that lies behind the eyes, The unknown unnameable sightless white That is the essential flame of night, Lustreless purple, hooded green, The myriad hues that lie between Darkness and darkness!.
.
.
.
And all's one, Gentle, embracing, quiet, dun, The world he rests in, world he knows, Perpetual curving.
Only—grows An eddy in that ordered falling, A knowledge from the gloom, a calling Weed in the wave, gleam in the mud— The dark fire leaps along his blood; Dateless and deathless, blind and still, The intricate impulse works its will; His woven world drops back; and he, Sans providence, sans memory, Unconscious and directly driven, Fades to some dark sufficient heaven.
O world of lips, O world of laughter, Where hope is fleet, and thought flies after, Of lights in the clear night, of cries That drift along the wave and rise Thin to the glittering stars above, You know the hands, the eyes of love! The strife of limbs, the sightless clinging, The infinite distance, and the singing Blown by the wind, a flame of sound, The gleam, the flowers, and vast around The horizon, and the heights above— You know the sigh, the long of love! But there the night is close, and there Darkness is cold and strange and bare; And the secret deeps are whisperless; And rhythm is all deliciousness; And joy is in the throbbing tide, Whose intricate fingers beat and glide In felt bewildering harmonies Of trembling touch; and music is The exquisite knocking of the blood.
Space is no more, under the mud; His bliss is older than the sun.
Silent and straight the waters run.
The lights, the cries, the willows dim, And the dark tide are one with him.
Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

The Monster

 When we might make with happy heart
 This world a paradise,
With bombs we blast brave men apart,
 With napalm carbonize.
Where we might till the sunny soil, And sing for joy of life, We spend our treasure and our toil In bloody strife.
The fields of wheat are sheening gold, The flocks have silver fleece; The signs are sweetly manifold Of plenty, praise and peace.
Yet see! The sky is like a cowl Where grimy toilers bore The shards of steel that feed the foul Red maw of War.
Instead of butter give us guns; Instead of sugur, shells.
Devoted mothers, bear your sons To glut still hotter hells.
Alas! When will mad mankind wake To banish evermore, And damn for God in Heaven's sake Mass Murder--WAR?
Written by John Davidson | Create an image from this poem

Thirty Bob a Week

 I couldn't touch a stop and turn a screw,
And set the blooming world a-work for me,
Like such as cut their teeth -- I hope, like you --
On the handle of a skeleton gold key;
I cut mine on a leek, which I eat it every week:
I'm a clerk at thirty bob as you can see.
But I don't allow it's luck and all a toss; There's no such thing as being starred and crossed; It's just the power of some to be a boss, And the bally power of others to be bossed: I face the music, sir; you bet I ain't a cur; Strike me lucky if I don't believe I'm lost! For like a mole I journey in the dark, A-travelling along the underground From my Pillar'd Halls and broad Suburbean Park, To come the daily dull official round; And home again at night with my pipe all alight, A-scheming how to count ten bob a pound.
And it's often very cold and very wet, And my missus stitches towels for a hunks; And the Pillar'd Halls is half of it to let-- Three rooms about the size of travelling trunks.
And we cough, my wife and I, to dislocate a sigh, When the noisy little kids are in their bunks.
But you never hear her do a growl or whine, For she's made of flint and roses, very odd; And I've got to cut my meaning rather fine, Or I'd blubber, for I'm made of greens and sod: So p'r'haps we are in Hell for all that I can tell, And lost and damn'd and served up hot to God.
I ain't blaspheming, Mr.
Silver-tongue; I'm saying things a bit beyond your art: Of all the rummy starts you ever sprung, Thirty bob a week's the rummiest start! With your science and your books and your the'ries about spooks, Did you ever hear of looking in your heart? I didn't mean your pocket, Mr.
, no: I mean that having children and a wife, With thirty bob on which to come and go, Isn't dancing to the tabor and the fife: When it doesn't make you drink, by Heaven! it makes you think, And notice curious items about life.
I step into my heart and there I meet A god-almighty devil singing small, Who would like to shout and whistle in the street, And squelch the passers flat against the wall; If the whole world was a cake he had the power to take, He would take it, ask for more, and eat them all.
And I meet a sort of simpleton beside, The kind that life is always giving beans; With thirty bob a week to keep a bride He fell in love and married in his teens: At thirty bob he stuck; but he knows it isn't luck: He knows the seas are deeper than tureens.
And the god-almighty devil and the fool That meet me in the High Street on the strike, When I walk about my heart a-gathering wool, Are my good and evil angels if you like.
And both of them together in every kind of weather Ride me like a double-seated bike.
That's rough a bit and needs its meaning curled.
But I have a high old hot un in my mind -- A most engrugious notion of the world, That leaves your lightning 'rithmetic behind: I give it at a glance when I say 'There ain't no chance, Nor nothing of the lucky-lottery kind.
' And it's this way that I make it out to be: No fathers, mothers, countres, climates -- none; Not Adam was responsible for me, Nor society, nor systems, nary one: A little sleeping seed, I woke -- I did, indeed -- A million years before the blooming sun.
I woke because I thought the time had come; Beyond my will there was no other cause; And everywhere I found myself at home, Because I chose to be the thing I was; And in whatever shape of mollusc or of ape I always went according to the laws.
I was the love that chose my mother out; I joined two lives and from the union burst; My weakness and my strength without a doubt Are mine alone for ever from the first: It's just the very same with a difference in the name As 'Thy will be done.
' You say it if you durst! They say it daily up and down the land As easy as you take a drink, it's true; But the difficultest go to understand, And the difficultest job a man can do, Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week, And feel that that's the proper thing for you.
It's a naked child against a hungry wolf; It's playing bowls upon a splitting wreck; It's walking on a string across a gulf With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck; But the thing is daily done by many and many a one; And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.
Written by Derek Walcott | Create an image from this poem

R.T.S.L. (1917-1977)

 As for that other thing
which comes when the eyelid is glazed
and the wax gleam
from the unwrinkled forehead
asks no more questions
of the dry mouth,

whether they open the heart like a shirt
to release a rage of swallows,
whether the brain
is a library for worms,
on the instant of that knowledge
of the moment
when everything became so stiff,

so formal with ironical adieux,
organ and choir,
and I must borrow a black tie,
and at what moment in the oration
shall I break down and weep -
there was the startle of wings
breaking from the closing cage
of your body, your fist unclenching
these pigeons circling serenely
over the page,

and,
as the parentheses lock like a gate
1917 to 1977,
the semicircles close to form a face,
a world, a wholeness,
an unbreakable O,
and something that once had a fearful name
walks from the thing that used to wear its name,
transparent, exact representative,
so that we can see through it
churches, cars, sunlight, 
and the Boston Common,
not needing any book.