The Night Has a Thousand Eyes

The night has a thousand eyes,

And the day but one;

Yet the light of the bright world dies

With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,

And the heart but one;

Yet the light of a whole life dies

When love is done.

By: Francis William Bourdillon (Born March 22, 1852; died January 13, 1921)

Solitude

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

Weep, and you weep alone.

For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,

But has trouble enough of its own.

Sing, it is lost on the air.

The echoes bound to a joyful sound,

But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;

Grieve, and they turn and go.

They want full measure of all your pleasure,

But they do not need your woe.

Be glad, and your friends are many;

Be sad, and you lose them all.

There are none to decline your nectared wine,

But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;

Fast, and the world goes by.

Succeed and give, and it helps you live,

But no man can help you die.

There is room in the halls of pleasure

For a long and lordly train,

But one by one we must all file on

Through the narrow aisles of pain.

By: Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Born November 5, 1855; died October 30, 1919)

I Love Them As I'm Defying Them!

I am the new colt.
I took the creamery road to the palace.
I took the chill-knob to be polished.
It was a lonely way.

My underside is beige and surprising
as the belly of a fire truck.
I took the creamery road.
I took the palace.

Tearing the grass with my black feet
I struck at the night with my firetruck neck
and found it once, the palace.

I am in it now alone.
I am precious like rosacea.
I stand for youth on my new knees
and I carried this flag the whole way.

I am several.
I am not harmless. I am small horses.


By: Monica Fambrough

Kissing A Horse

Of the two spoiled, barn-sour geldings

we owned that year, it was Red-

skittish and prone to explode

even at fourteen years - who'd let me

hold to my face his own: the massive labyrinthine

caverns of the nostrils, the broad plain 

up the head to the eyes. He'd let me stoke

his coarse chin whiskers and take 

his soft meaty underlip

in my hands, press my man's carnivorous

kiss to his grass-nipping upper half of one, just

so that I could smell

the long way his breath had come from the rain

and the sun, the lungs and the heart,

from a world that meant no harm.

By: Robert Wrigley