The Miracle of Love

Life simply seems to cease sometimes,

turns dark, stands still, stays frozen.

We dread these difficult, dire days

when our zest for life becomes self-disgust

and grabs us by our despised throat,

spews spiteful charges against us and God.

What miracle, when even then

the light of love begins to shine

its quiet, tender flame on our dreary path.

Without this grace we would be lost forever,

in deep, dark dungeons of demonic despair,

the light in us and God destroyed.

By: Hermann Hesse

Photo: http://www.hdwallpapers.in/words_of_love-wallpapers.html

Going to Sleep

This day has made me tired.
I wish to sleep
and welcome this starlight
like a child after play.

Hands of mine, stop doing.
Mind of mine, stop thinking.
All my senses are getting ready
to sink soon into slumber and sweet sleep.

No longer fettered, my soul slips free,
ready to soar upward in its infinite flight,
to live fully its thousand lives
in the magic journeys of the night.

By: Hermann Hesse

Photo: http://www.freecodesource.com/wallpapers/wallpaper/Books-and-Sleep/

Philosophy

We evolve from the unconscious to total awareness

and spiral once back to our dark source through many paths

to what we knew in the beginning.

From there we get expelled without mercy

into the prison of doubt: philosophy.

And slowly make our first steps

in the maze of irony.

What follows is intense contemplation,

through many polished mirrors.

We are caught in the cold darkness

of the mind's iron grid

mired in the icy split,

the frozen pit of world contempt.

But then we are guided back

through the narrow gate of conscious wisdom

to the bittersweet bliss of the elder peace

grounded on well-earned self-contempt.

By: Hermann Hesse

America for Me!

Tis fine to see the Old World, and travel up and down

Among the famous palaces and cities of renown,

To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of the Kings,

But now I think I've had enough of antiquated things.

So it's home again, and home again, America for me!

My heart is turning home again, and there I long to be,

In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars,

Whee the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.

Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air;

And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair;

And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study

Rome;

But when it comes to living there is no place like home.

I like the German fir-woods, in green battalions drilled;

I like the gardens of Versailles with flashing fountains filled;

But, oh, to take your hand, my dear, and ramble for a day

In the friendly western woodland where Nature has her way!

I know that Europe's wonderful, yet something seems to lack:

The past is too much with her, and the people looking back.

But the glory of the Present is to make the Future free, 

We love our land for what she is and what she is to be.

Oh, it's home again, and home again, America for me!

I want a ship that's westward bound to plough the rolling sea,

To the blessed Land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars,

Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.

By: Henry Van Dyke

Moonlight

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit, and let the sound of music

Creep in our ears: soft stillness, and the night,

Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Sit, Jessica: look, how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:

There's not the smallest orb which thou behold

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young cherubims.

By: William Shakespeare

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