Some Favorite Poems
Richard Cory
Whenever Richard Cory went downtown,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good Morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich--yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)
maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)
and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and
milly befriended a strange star
whose rays five languid fingers were;
and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and
may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.
For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea
e.e. cummings
Hope is the Thing With Feathers
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea,
Yet never in extremity
It asked a crumb of me.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
What is Success?
To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent
people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty,
To find the best in others,
To leave the world a bit better;
whether by a healthy child, a garden patch,
or a redeemed social condition;
To know that one life has breathed easier
because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
"The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus
Let no such man be trusted,
Mark the music".
(From "The Merchant of Venice", Act V, scene I) William Shakespeare
The Mermaid
All day he had felt her stirring
under the boat, and several times
when the net had tightened, frog-nervous
He had bungled the pulling-in
Half glad of the stupid, open mouths
He could throw back.
At sundown, the shifting and holding of time
and air had brought her to the surface, to
sun herself in the last slow light where lilies
and leeches tangled and rocked.
He could have taken her then,
Aimed his net as dragonfly hunters do
When the glassy gliding of rainbows
goes to their heads, could have carried
her home on tiptoe and lifted her lightly,
ever so lightly over his sill.
And, hopeless, knew that to have
her alive was only this:
The sounding, casting, waiting,
seeing, and praying the light not to move,
not yet to round the bay of her shoulder.
And passing, release her to the darkness
He would not enter.
Unknown
