Reluctance, a poem by Robert Frost.

Post 611 - Robert Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874. He moved to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, MA. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and later at Harvard, though he never earned a formal degree from either.

In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who became a major inspiration in his poetry until her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912, after their New Hampshire farm failed, and it was there that Frost was influenced by such contemporary British poets as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves. While in England, Frost also became friends with the poet Ezra Pound, who helped to promote and publish his work. He and his wife returned to the United States in 1915.

By the 1920s, he was the most celebrated poet in America, and with each new book — including New Hampshire (1923), A Further Range (1936), Steeple Bush (1947), and In the Clearing (1962) — his fame and honors (including four Pulitzer Prizes) increased. Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont. He died in Boston in 1963.

About him, President John F. Kennedy said, "He has bequeathed his nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding."
I think this is a particularly beautiful poem.


Reluctance by Robert Frost.

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last long aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

The Journey, a poem by Mary Oliver.

Post 610 - Mary Oliver (born in 1935) is an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times described her as "far and away, this country's best-selling poet." Oliver briefly attended both Ohio State University and Vassar College in the mid-1950s, but did not receive a degree at either college. She’s since received Honorary Doctorates from The Art Institute of Boston, Dartmouth College, and Tufts University.
Oliver has given very few interviews, saying she prefers for her writing to speak for itself. While she’s produced many memorable poems, this is one of my favorites.

The Journey by Mary Oliver.

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

We Saw A Vision, a poem by Liam Mac Uistin.

Post 609 - The following poem, in English and in Irish, was read today at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin in the presence of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, who laid a wreath in memory of those who died in the struggle for Irish freedom. The Garden commemorates freedom fighters from various uprisings, including:
- the 1798 rebellion of the Society of United Irishmen
- the 1803 rebellion of Robert Emmet
- the 1848 rebellion of Young Ireland
- the 1867 rising of the Fenian Brotherhood
- the 1916 Easter Rising of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army
- the 1919-21 Irish War of Independence of the IRA.
The Garden was opened in 1966 by President Eamon de Valera on the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, in which he had been a commander. Its focal point is a statue of the Children of Lir by Oisín Kelly, symbolising rebirth and resurrection.


We Saw A Vision by Liam Mac Uistin.

In the darkness of despair we saw a vision, We lit the light of hope, And it was not extinguished. In the desert of discouragement we saw a vision, We planted the tree of valor, And it blossomed.

In the winter of bondage we saw a vision, We melted the snow of lethargy, And the river of resurrection flowed from it.

We sent our vision aswim like a swan on the river, The vision became a reality, Winter became summer, Bondage became freedom, And this we left to you as your inheritance.

O generation of freedom remember us, The generation of the vision.


In Irish, the poem reads as follows:

An Aisling.

I ndorchacht an éadóchais rinneadh aisling dúinn. Lasamar solas an dóchais. Agus níor múchadh é.

I bhfásach an lagmhisnigh rinneadh aisling dúinn. Chuireamar crann na crógachta. Agus tháing bláth air.

I ngeimhreadh na daoirse rinneadh aisling dúinn. Mheileamar sneachta táimhe. Agus rith abhainn na hathbheochana as.

Chuireamar ár n-aisling ag snámh mar eala ar an abhainn. Rinneadh fírinne den aisling. Rinneadh samhradh den gheimhreadh. Rinneadh saoirse den daoirse. Agus d'fhágamar agaibhse mar oidhreacht í.

A ghlúnta na saoirse cuimhnígí orainne, glúnta na haislinge...

A sonnet by William Shakespeare.

Poet 608 - How that man could write.....

Shakespeare's Sonnet 30.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.

To My Mother, a poem by Christina Rossetti.

Post 607 - The English poet Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894) wrote poems of love, fantasy, and nature, verses for children, and devotional poetry and prose. This is Rossetti’s first poem, written on April 27th, 1842, when she was 11 years old.

To My Mother by Christina Rossetti.

To-day’s your natal day,
Sweet flowers I bring;
Mother, accept, I pray,
My offering.

And may you happy live,
And long us bless;
Receiving as you give
Great happiness.

A poem by Emily Dickinson.

Post 606 - Emily Dickinson (1830–86).

Complete Poems. 1924.

Part One: Life

XCVII

We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies.

The heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the cubits warp
For fear to be a king.