Poem of the Day

Here’s a cheerful little poem by Shelley! (Just kidding)

Love’s Philosophy
By Percy Bysshe Shelley

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one another’s being mingle—
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdain’d its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea—
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

I’m not sure where I came across this poem (probably in an anthology), but I like its simplicity.

Stray Dog
By Charlotte Mish

Your wistful eyes searched each one as he passed.
   Stray dog—so lost, so starved and starkly thin,
And yet your gallant hope held to the last
   That there would come a heart to take you in.

Some came who jeered at your bewilderment;
   Some kicked you, shouted, threw things till you’d gone.
But, oh, more cruel was the one who bent
   And petted you, and murmured—and went on.

Vasser Miller is such a powerful writer!

The Grace of Remembrance
FOR TRIXIE MOORE
By Vassar Miller

May not the little time I had with you
Be swallowed in the whirlpools of the years,
Nor these tears washed away by bitter tears
As dew is lost in rainstorms, though the dew
Has drenched the grasses. May these days, though few,
Not blunt their sharpness like a pair of shears
Dulled upon harder sorrows, shames, and fears,
Or mere monotony, but bite me through.

The sore that opened when I saw you wear
Misfortune like a flower—may it smart
Anew each changeful weather of my soul
To hurt me in my querulous ease and tear
The scabs from memory, from mind and heart,
Because I need such wounds to keep me whole.

When I was a kid we lived on a 28-acre lot in upstate NY and there were lots of wooded areas on the property (over which my sisters and I ran rampant). I always loved it when the yellow violets came out.

The Yellow Violet
By William Cullen Bryant

When beechen buds begin to swell,
   And woods the blue-bird’s warble know,
The yellow violet’s modest bell
   Peeps from last-year’s leaves below.

Ere russet fields their green resume,
   Sweet flower, I love, in forest bare,
To meet thee, when thy faint perfume
   Alone is in the virgin air.

Of all her train, the hands of Spring
   First plant thee in the watery mould,
And I have seen thee blossoming
   Beside the snow-bank’s edges cold.

Thy parent sun, who bade thee view
   Pale skies, and chilling moisture sip
Has bathed thee in his own bright hue,
   And streaked with jet thy glowing lip.

Yet slight thy form, and low thy seat,
   And earthward bent thy gentle eye,
Unapt the passing view to meet,
   When loftier flowers are flaunting nigh.

Oft, in the sunless April day,
   Thy early smile has stayed my walk;
But midst the gorgeous blooms of May
   I passed thee on thy humble stalk.

So they, who climb to wealth, forget
   The friends in darker fortunes tried;
I copied them—but I regret
   That I should ape the ways of pride.

And when again the genial hour
   Awakes the painted tribes of light,
I’ll not o’er look the modest flower
   That made the woods of April bright.

I’m actually in a good mood, but that won’t stop me from posting a sad poem!

When We Two Parted
By George Gordon, Lord Byron

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this!

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow;
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o’er me—
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee so well:
Long, long I shall rue thee
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met:
In silence I grieve
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?—
With silence and tears.

I was introduced to this poem by David and I quite like it!

Her Praise
By William Butler Yeats

She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.
I have gone about the house, gone up and down
As a man does who has published a new book,
Or a young girl dressed out in her new gown,
And though I have turned the talk by hook or crook
Until her praise should be the uppermost theme,
A woman spoke of some new tale she had read,
A man confusedly in a half dream
As though some other name ran in his head.
She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.
I will talk no more of books or the long war
But walk by the dry thorn until I have found
Some beggar sheltering from the wind, and there
Manage the talk until her name come round.
If there be rags enough he will know her name
And be well pleased remembering it, for in the old days,
Though she had young men’s praise and old men’s blame,
Among the poor both old and young gave her praise.

My sister wrote a paper on Charlotte Perkins Gilman in grad school. I wonder if she ever came across this poem.

To Labor
By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Shall you complain who feed the world?
      Who clothe the world?
      Who house the world?
Shall you complain, who are the world,
   Of what the world may do?
      As from this hour
      You use your power,
   The world must follow you!

The world’s life hangs on your right hand,
      Your strong right hand!
      Your skilled right hand!
You hold the whole world in your hand—
   See to it what you do!
      Or dark or light,
      Or strong or right,
   The world is made by you!

Then rise, as you never rose before!
      Nor hoped before!
      Nor dared before!
And show, as you never showed before,
   The power that lies in you!
      Stand all as one!
      See justice done!
   Believe, and Dare, and Do!

I really like Sara Teasdale. I will definitely be reading more of her stuff and adding it to my list.

After Love
By Sara Teasdale

There is no magic any more,
   We meet as other people do,
You work no miracle for me
   Nor I for you.

You were the wind and I the sea—
   There is no splendor any more,
I have grown listless as the pool
   Beside the shore.

But though the pool is safe from storm
   And from the tide has found surcease,
It grows more bitter than the sea,
   For all its peace.

Naomi Shihab Nye just has a gift.

The Song
By Naomi Shihab Nye

From somewhere
a calm musical note arrives.
You balance it on your tongue,
a single ripe grape,
till your whole body glistens.
In the space between breaths
you apply it to any wound
and the wound heals.

Soon the nights will lengthen,
you will lean into the year
humming like a saw.
You will fill the lamps with kerosene,
knowing somewhere a line breaks,
a city goes black,
people dig for candles in the bottom drawer.
You will be ready. You will use the song like a match.
It will fill your rooms
opening rooms of its own
so you sing, I did not know
my house was this large.

I miss my roomie! I can’t wait until she gets back tomorrow!

The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk
By William Cowper

SUPPOSED TO BE WRITTEN BY ALEXANDER SELKIRK DURING SOLITARY ABODE ON THE ISLAND OF JUAN FERNANDEZ

I am monarch of all I survey;
My right there is none to dispute;
From the centre all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
O Solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms,
Than reign in this horrible place.

I am out of humanity’s reach,
I must finish my journey alone,
Never hear the sweet music of speech;
I start at the sound of my own.
The beasts that roam over the plain
My form with indifference see;
They are so unacquainted with man,
Their tameness is shocking to me.

Society, Friendship, and Love
Divinely bestow’d upon man,
O, had I the wings of a dove
How soon would I taste you again!
My sorrows I then might assuage
In the ways of religion and truth;
Might learn from the wisdom of age,
And be cheer’d by the sallies of youth.

Religion! what treasure untold
Resides in that heavenly word!
More precious than silver or gold,
Or all that this earth can afford.
But the sound of the church-going bell
These valleys and rocks never heard,
Nor sighed at the sound of a knell,
Or smiled when a Sabbath appeared.

Ye winds that have made me your sport,
Convey to this desolate shore
Some cordial endearing report
Of a land I shall visit no more:
My friends,—do they now and then send
A wish or a thought after me?
O tell me I yet have a friend,
Though a friend I am never to see.

How fleet is a glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight,
The tempest itself lags behind,
And the swift-winged arrows of light.
When I think of my own native land
In a moment I seem to be there;
But alas! recollection at hand
Soon hurries me back to despair.

But the sea-fowl is gone to her nest,
The beast is laid down in his lair;
Even here is a season of rest,
And I to my cabin repair.
There’s mercy in every place,
And mercy, encouraging thought!
Gives even affliction a grace
And reconciles man to his lot.

Even though this is one of his most famous (and I tend to like more obscure stuff), it’s one of my favorite of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
By William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
   So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

I came across this poem at the Palace of the Governors as well. I really need to read more Rita Dove anyway. She comes highly recommended by Heather.

P.S. I love being back in Austin, but it’s so freaking hot and humid! I’m going to melt!

Rosa
By Rita Dove

How she sat there,
the time right inside a place
so wrong it was ready.

That trim name with
its dream of a bench
to rest on. Her sensible coat.

Doing nothing was the doing:
the clean flame of her gaze
carved by a camera flash.

How she stood up
when they bent down to retrieve
her purse. That courtesy.

It’s been a while (about three months) since I posted a poem at night, so I thought this appropriate. P.S. I’m back in Austin now. YAY!

Night
By Louise Bogan

The cold remote islands
And the blue estuaries
Where what breathes, breathes
The restless wind of the inlets,
And what drinks, drinks
The incoming tide;

Where shell and weed
Wait upon the salt wash of the sea,
And the clear nights of stars
Swing their lights westward
To set behind the land;

Where the pulse clinging to the rocks
Renews itself forever;
Where, again on cloudless nights,
The water reflects
The firmament’s partial setting;

—O remember
In your narrowing dark hours
That more things move
Than blood in the heart.

My last day in NM. YAY!

The Poet and His Book
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

Down, you mongrel, Death!
Back into your kennel!
I have stolen breath
In a stalk of fennel!
You shall scratch and you shall whine
Many a night, and you shall worry
Many a bone, before you bury
One sweet bone of mine!

When shall I be dead?
When my flesh is withered,
And above my head
Yellow pollen gathered
All the empty afternoon?
When sweet lovers pause and wonder
Whom am I that lie thereunder,
Hidden from the moon?

This my personal death?—
That my lungs be failing
To inhale the breath
Others are exhaling?
This my subtle spirit’s end?—
Ah, when the thawed winter splashes
Over these chance dust and ashes,
Weep not me, my friend!

Me, by no means dead
In that hour, but surely
When this book, unread,
Rots to earth obscurely,
And no more to any breast,
Close against the clamorous swelling
Of the thing there is no telling,
Are these pages pressed!

When this book is mould,
And a book of many
Waiting to be sold
For a casual penny,
In a little open case,
In a street unclean and cluttered,
Where a heavy mud is spattered
From the passing drays,

Stranger, pause and look;
From the dust of ages
Lift this little book,
Turn the tattered pages,
Read me, do not let me die!
Search the fading letters, finding
Steadfast in the broken binding
All that once was I!

When these veins are weeds,
When these hollowed sockets
Watch the rooty seeds
Bursting down like rockets,
And surmise the spring again,
Or, remote in that black cupboard,
Watch the pink worms writhing upward
At the smell of rain,

Boys and girls that lie
Whispering in the hedges,
Do not let me die,
Mix me with your pledges;
Boys and girls that slowly walk
In the woods, and weep, and quarrel,
Staring past the pink wild laurel,
Mix me with your talk,

Do not let me die!
Farmers at your raking,
When the sun is high,
While the hay is making,
When, along the stubble strewn,
Withering on their stalks uneaten,
Strawberries turn dark and sweeten
In the lapse of noon;

Shepherds on the hills,
In the pastures, drowsing
To the tinkling bells
Of the brown sheep browsing;
Sailors cying through the storm;
Scholars at your study; hunters
Lost amid the whirling winter’s
Whiteness uniform;

Men that long to sleep;
Men that wake and revel;—
If an old song leap
To your senses’ level
At such moments, may it be
Sometimes, though a moment only,
Some forgotten, quaint and homely
Vehicle of me?

Women at your toil,
Women at your leisure,
Till the kettle boil,
Snatch of me your pleasure,
Where the broom-straw marks the leaf;
Women quiet with your weeping
Lest you wake a workman sleeping,
Mix me with your grief.

Boys and girls that steal
From the shocking laughter
Of the old, to kneel
By a dripping rafter
Under the discoloured eaves,
Out of trunks with hingeless covers
Lifting tales of saints and lovers,
Travellers, goblins, thieves,

Suns that shine by night,
Mountains made from valleys,—
Bear me to the light,
Flat upon your bellies
By the webby window lie,
Where the little flies are crawling,
Read me, margin me with scrawling,
Do no let me die!

Sexton, ply your trade!
In a shower of gravel
Stamp upon your spade!
Many a rose shall ravel,
Many a metal wreath shall rust
In the rain, and I go singing
Through the lots where you are flinging
Yellow clay on dust!

I’m down to my last couple days in NM (HOORAY!) so I thought I’d post another poem I read at the Palace of the Governors.

Transforming the Strange
By Renée Gregorio

In the hills of the north, beside the stream
a wooden, water-powered fulcrum-pestle
fills with water, pounds down slowly
into the grains of rice in the mortar.

On the road to My Son,
three women in white ao dai, conical hats,
ride their bicycles down a dirt road
as one conversation, as white heron
stand on a soaked field.

At the marketplace, old women
chew betel nut, their lips and teeth red with it,
or they crouch down low, smoking cigarettes,
just talking to each other. Their rootedness,
desired as the day sun breaks through this sky
now flooded with clouds.

Indigo cloth stretched on lines of rope
dries in morning’s sun on the dirt path to Lao Cai.
I pass an old woman, smile at her and say hello.
She pats my hips hard as she goes by—
I like the way body becomes language here.

The way strange becomes everyday,
that the roads open out in front of us,
juicy as bitten pomegranate seeds,
abundant as monsoon rains,
delicately edged as the hand-laced
cotton cloth we buy to cover our table
when we arrive home.

This one’s for my lovely roomie because I know how much she loves William Blake!

The Divine Image
By William Blake

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God, our father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, turk, or jew;
Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.

I have no context for this except that I liked it and I’ve not posted anything by Marlowe before. Enjoy!

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
By Christopher Marlowe

Come live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant poises;
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair-lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my Love.

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my Love.

I found this on Ted Kooser's (the U.S. poet laureate) website.

The Peace of Wild Things
By Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

I found this on Ted Kooser’s (the U.S. poet laureate) website.

The Peace of Wild Things
By Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

I’m going to Santa Fe to have lunch with my cousin, so I decided I’d post another poem I found at the Palace of the Governors.

Late Afternoon Over a Bottle of Sake
By John Brandi

Blue clouds float
backwards in autumn sky.
Cottonwoods twirl in leaf song.

You open a bottle
of the finest sake. We scan the trees.
“Year after year, the same leaves

Over and over again.”
Your hair is white, life is full.
Bodhidharma, Buddy Holly

Memphis Minnie, Chet Baker
now silent in the meditation hall.
Sun stands on its legs,

The broken hoe
has become a morning glory.
You, a funny old guy with lots to say.

Buddha was born from Mara’s side.
Christ from a virgin.
Lao Tzu, barefoot, in a falling star.

What do you mean by miracle
I ask. You tell me your roshi told you
“Stand, now sit

You have just seen a miracle.”

I feel kind of silly (not sure why), so I’m posting a funny poem.

Peekaboo, I Almost See You
By Ogden Nash

Middle-aged life is merry, and I love to lead it,
But there comes a day when your eyes are all right but your arm isn’t
   long enough to hold the telephone book where you can read it,
And your friends get jocular, so you go to the oculist,
And of all your friends he is the joculist,
So over his facetiousness let us skim,
Only noting that he has been waiting for you ever since you said
   Good evening to his grandfather clock under the impression that
   it was him,
And you look at his chart and it says SHRDLU QWERTYOP, and
   you say Well, why SHRDNTLU QWERTYOP? and he says
   one set of glasses won’t do.
You need two,
One for reading Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason and Keats’s “Endymion” with,
And the other for walking around without saying Hello to strange wymion with.
So you spend your time taking off your seeing glasses to put on your
   reading glasses, and then remembering that your reading glasses
   are upstairs or in the car,
And then you can’t find your seeing glasses again because without
   them on you can’t see where they are.
Enough of such mishaps, they would try the patience of an ox,
I prefer to forget both pairs of glasses and pass my declining years
   saluting strange women and grandfather clocks.

Monsoon season has started and we get some rain every day. It’s never really dreary because it doesn’t rain for long, but I’m cranky (because I seem to have pulled a muscle in my back or something so I’m in excruciating pain) so I’m posting this poem anyway.

The Rainy Day
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the moldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
   And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the moldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast
   And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
   Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
   Some days must be dark and dreary.

It’s one of those days…

Epitaph on a Tyrant
By W.H. Auden

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

This is another poem I discovered at the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe.

The Fish
By Jane Hirshfield

There is a fish
that stitches
the inner water
and the outer water together.

Bastes them
with its gold body’s flowing.

A heavy thread
follows that transparent river,
secures it—
the broad world we make daily,
daily give ourselves to.

Neither imagined
nor unimagined,
neither winged nor finned,
we walk the luminous seam.
Knot it.
Flow back into the open gills.

It’s Monday, so I feel like posting a sad poem.

Beside a Deathbed
By Vassar Miller

Her spirit hiding among skin and bones
In willingness and wariness waits death
Like hares that peer from corners of their pens
Lured by a curiosity, yet loath.
Her eyes meet bed, chair, face, but do not focus,
As if these objects, heretofore mere shade,
Have caught up with their shadows. Things that wake us
Upon her eyelids heap a heavy load.
As straws pierce rock, our words reach where she lies,
Heedless of our cheerfulness or condolence.
Uncaring how our chatter ebbs or flows,
She catches the first syllable of silence.
So true the craftsman, memory, in lying
She will be less a stranger dead than dying.

Amy Lowell just knows her stuff!

To a Friend
By Amy Lowell

I ask but one thing of you, only one,
   That always you will be my dream of you;
   That never shall I wake to find untrue
All this I have believed and rested on,
Forever vanished, like a vision gone
   Out into the night. Alas, how few
   There are who strike in us a chord we knew
Existed, but so seldom heard its tone
   We tremble at the half-forgotten sound.
The world is full of rude awakenings
   And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground,
Yet still our human longing vainly clings
   To a belief in beauty through all wrongs.
   O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!

I thought I’d post a nice friendship poem today, to make up for yesterday’s depressing tone.

The Friend Who Just Stands By
By B.Y. Williams

When trouble comes your soul to try,
You love the friend who just “stands by.”
Perhaps there’s nothing he can do—
The thing is strictly up to you;
For there are troubles all your own,
And paths the soul must tread alone;
Times when love cannot smooth the road
Nor friendship lift the heavy load,
But just to know you have a friend
Who will “stand by” until the end,
Whose sympathy through all endures,
Whose warm handclasp is always yours—
It helps, someway, to pull you through,
Although there’s nothing he can do.
And so with fervent heart you cry,
“God bless the friend who just ’stands by’!”

So I finished Gone with the Wind last night, with many tears. I do love that novel and it’s firmly ensconced in my top five.

Anyway, moving on. A conversation with my sister last night gave me a renewed appreciation for my friends, whom I love dearly. May I never neglect you.

Around the Corner
By Charles Hanson Towne

Around the corner I have a friend,
In this great city that has no end;
Yet the days go by and weeks rush on,
And before I know it, a year is gone,
And I never see my old friends face,
For Life is a swift and terrible race.
He knows I like him just as well
As in the days when I rang his bell
And he rang mine.
But we were younger then,
And now we are busy, tired men:
Tired of playing a foolish game,
Tired of trying to make a name.
“To-morrow” I say! “I will call on Jim,
Just to show that I’m thinking of him.”
But to-morrow comes—and to-morrow goes,
And distance between us grows and grows.

Around the corner, yet miles away…
“Here’s a telegram sir,”
                  “Jim died today.”

And that’s what we get and deserve in the end:
Around the corner, a vanished friend.

I only have about 250 pages left in GWTW. I’m enjoying it so much! That has nothing to do with this poem, but here you go…

The Words Under the Words
(For Sitti Khadra, north of Jerusalem)
By Naomi Shihab Nye

My grandmother’s hands recognize grapes,
the damp shine of a goat’s new skin.
When I was sick they followed me,
I woke from the long fever to find them
Covering my head like cool prayers.

My grandmother’s days are made of bread,
a round pat-pat and the slow baking.
She waits by the oven watching a strange car
circle the streets. Maybe it holds her son,
lost to America. More often, tourists,
who kneel and weep at mysterious shrines.
She knows how often mail arrives,
how rarely there is a letter.
When one comes, she announces it, a miracle,
listening to it read again and again
in the dim evening light.

My grandmother’s voice says
nothing can surprise her.
Take her the shotgun wound and the crippled baby.
She knows the spaces we travel through,
the messages we cannot send—our voices are short
and would get lost on the journey.
Farewell to the husband’s coat,
the ones she has loved and nourished,
who fly from her like seeds into a deep sky.
They will plant themselves. We will all die.

My grandmother’s eyes say Allah is everywhere, even in death.
When she talks of the orchard
and the new olive press,
when she tells the stories of Joha
and his foolish wisdoms,
He is her first thought, what she really thinks of His name.

“Answer, if you hear the words under the words—
otherwise it is just a world
with a lot of rough edges,
difficult to get through, and our pockets
full of stones.”

I’m currently reading Gone with the Wind, which I haven’t read since I was in seventh grade (fifteen years ago!). I’ve always listed it as one of my top five favorite books, and I think I’m getting so much more out of reading it this time than when I was twelve years old! This is what happened when I reread Jane Eyre after a lapse of about ten years. Anyway, suffice it to say that I’m really enjoying GWTW. I thought this poem was appropriate in light of rediscovering an old friend.

There is no frigate like a book
By Emily Dickinson

There is no frigate like a book
      To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
      Of prancing poetry.

This traverse may the poorest take
      Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
      That bears a human soul!