"Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Commentary: I couldn't let our poetry exhibition come to a close without sharing another poem from my favorite American poet, Robert Frost. It also seemed appropriate to save "Fire and Ice" for last given its theme. Hope you've enjoyed our celebration of poetry month!

"When, in disgrace..." by William Shakespeare

When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fat,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Commentary: I love sonnets, and Shakespeare is the king of sonnets. So I wanted to be sure to share one before national poetry month concluded.

"And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time" by William Blake

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England's mountains green?

And was the holy Lamb of God

On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here

Among these dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!

Bring me my arrows of desire!

Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!

Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England's green and pleasant land.

"Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

"Eagle of the Night (The Owl)" by Dwina Murphy-Gibb

Eagle of the night, friend of strangers in the dark,
Seer of the unseen, you who are of silent feathers,
Companion of Athena,
You, who bring light to those without sight,
Be my eyes in the blackest of deep places,
Be my breastplate of wisdom in the Court of Indra,
Be the bearer of keen insights in sooth-saying
And the revealer of Truth in all omens and faces.

Eagle of the night, guardian owl of all forest trees,
Keeper of the woodland, you who are witness to secrets,
Companion of Hecate,
You, who bring solace to walkers of the twilight,
Be my ears in the depths of noiseless places,
Be my potent quill in the writing of sacred Law,
Be the plumed cloak of refuge, talon and claw,
And the revealer of mysteries in all arts and graces.

"Teaching" by Richard Hague

What should be mostly silence

is too loud.

Everyone throws stones into the river.

Everyone wants to catch the birds.

Everyone shoots at the fish.

Meanwhile, behind them,

a sycamore swallows the sun.

One sparrow folds all darkness in its wings.

A worm turns as slowly as history

in the intricate gut of a hawk.

Commentary: Another poem from my friend Richard Hague. This one comes from his collection entitled "Public Hearings" published by Word Press in 2009. You can find more of his works on Amazon.com by clicking here. I hope you enjoy him as much as I do!

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Thou winning near the goal -- yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, thou thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands crest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with breed
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say's,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

"Fergus and the Druid" by William Butler Yeats

Fergus. This whole day have I followed in the rocks,

             And you have changed and flowed form shape to shape,

             First as a raven on whose ancient wings

             Scarcely a feather lingered, then you seemed

             A weasel moving on from stone to stone,

             And now at last you wear a human shape,

             A thin grey man half lost in gathering night.

Druid. What would you, king of the proud Red Branch kings?

Fergus. This would I say, most wise of living souls:

             Young subtle Conchubar sat close by me

             When I gave judgment, and his words were wise,

             And what to me was burden without end,

             To him seemed easy, so I laid the crown

             Upon his head to cast away my sorrow.

Druid. What would you, king of the proud Red Branch kings?

Fergus. A king and proud! and that is my despair.

             I feast amid my people on the hill,

             And pace the woods, and drive my chariot-wheels

             In the white border of the murmuring sea;

             And still I feel the crown upon my head.

Druid. What would you, Fergus?

Fergus.                                         Be no more a king

             But learn the dreaming wisdom that is yours.

Druid. Look on my thin grey hair and hollow cheeks

           And on these hands that may not lift the sword,

           This body trembling like a wind-blown reed.

           No woman's loved me, no man sought my help.

Fergus. A king is but a foolish laborer

             Who wastes his blood to be another's dream.

Druid. Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams;

            Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.

Fergus. I see my life go drifting like a river

             From change to change; I have been many things --

             A green drop in the surge, a gleam of light

             Upon a sword, a fir-tree on a hill,

             An old slave grinding at a heavy quern,

             A king sitting upon a chair of gold --

             And all these things were wonderful and great;

             But now I have grown nothing, knowing all.

             Ah! Druid, Druid, how great webs of sorrow

             Lay hidden in the small slate-coloured thing!

"Ulysses" by Lord Alfred Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known--cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all,--
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle,
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me,
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads--you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
IT may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

"A Psalm of Life" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! -
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust htou art, to dust returnest,
Was nto spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us father than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, - act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'rehead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er lives solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

"Tripping Over Joy" by Hafiz

What is the difference between your experience of existence and that of a saint?

The saint knows that the spiritual path is a sublime chess game with God
And that the Beloved has just made such a fantastic move
That the saint is now continually tripping over joy
And bursting out in laughter and saying, "I surrender!"

Whereas, my dear, I am afraid you still think you have a thousand serious moves left.

Commentary: Hafiz was a medieval sufi mystic who wrote beautiful poems. This is one of my favorites! He's the kind of poet that makes you want to learn his native language so you can read his poems in the same language he wrote them!

"Eros Turannos" by Edwin Arlington Robinson

She fears him, and will always ask

   What fated her to choose him;

She meets in his engaging mask                  

   All reasons to refuse him;

But what she meets and what she fears

Are less than are the downward years,

Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs

   Of age, were she to lose him.

Between a blurred sagacity

   That once had power to sound him,

And Love, that will not let him be

   The seeker that she found him,

Her pride assuages her, almost,

As if it were alone the cost.

He sees that he will not be lost,

   And waits, and looks around him.

A sense of ocean and old trees

   Envelops and allures him;

Tradition, touching all he sees

   Beguiles and reassures him;

And all her doubts of what he says

Are dimmed with what she knows of days,

Till even prejudice delays,

   And fades—and she secures him.

The falling leaf inaugurates

   The reign of her confusion;

The pounding wave reverberates

   The crash of her illusion;

And home, where passion lived and died,

Becomes a place where she can hide,—

While all the town and harbor side

   Vibrate with her seclusion.

We tell you, tapping on our brows,

   The story as it should be,—

As if the story of a house

   Were told, or ever could be;

We’ll have no kindly veil between

Her visions and those we have seen,—

As if we guessed what hers have been

   Or what they are, or would be.

Meanwhile, we do no harm; for they

   That with a god have striven,

Not hearing much of what we say,

   Take what the god has given;

Though like waves breaking it may be,

Or like a changed familiar tree,

Or like a stairway to the sea,

   Where down the blind are driven.

"Ode" by Arthur O'Shaughnessy

We are the music-makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers, and sitting by desolate streams,
World-losers and world-forsakers, on whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers of the world for ever, it seems

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory.
One man with a dream, at pleasure shall go forth and conquer a crown,
And three with a new song's measure can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying in the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing, and Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying to the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth.

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

"Famous" by Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,   

which knew it would inherit the earth   

before anybody said so.   

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   

watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   

The idea you carry close to your bosom   

is famous to your bosom.   

The boot is famous to the earth,   

more famous than the dress shoe,   

which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.   

I want to be famous to shuffling men   

who smile while crossing streets,   

sticky children in grocery lines,   

famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   

but because it never forgot what it could do. 

"'Hope' is the thing with feathers" by Emily Dickinson

“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 chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" by Langston Hughes

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

"Mr. M. Accelerates" by Richard Hague

Mr. M. stands at the board,
a diagram of the universe
behind him. "Do not think
it is contained," he warns,
pointing at the border
of the slate. "Indeed, it goes on,
continuing to accelerate
from its center,
which, like Nicholas of Cusa's God,
is everywhere
and nowhere."

I grip my desktop,
suddenly furious with stillness.
I want to catch up,
accelerate past the
Big Bang, get out
in front of its expansion
and ride like a surfer
the very break and plunge
of energy into matter,

hang ten into infinity,
catch up with Mr. M.,
who seems to stand still
before us in class, twirling his chalk,
but who secretly hotdogs it
high on the curl of All,
then laughs in the roar
of the Nothing or Everything
he pipelines,
out there way beyond us.

Commentary: I have the pleasure of working with Richard Hague (a two-time Ohio state poet-laureate). This particular poem is from his collection entitled "The Time It Takes Light" published by Word Press in 2004. You can find one of his works here. I hope you enjoy his poems as much as I do!

"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

"To Autumn" by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

   Steady thy laden head across a brook;

   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

   Among the river sallows, borne aloft

      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

"The Sun Rising" by John Donne

Busy old fool, unruly sun,

               Why dost thou thus,

Through windows, and through curtains call on us?

Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?

               Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide

               Late school boys and sour prentices,

         Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,

         Call country ants to harvest offices,

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

               Thy beams, so reverend and strong

               Why shouldst thou think?

I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,

But that I would not lose her sight so long;

               If her eyes have not blinded thine,

               Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,

         Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine

         Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.

Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,

And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

               She's all states, and all princes, I,

               Nothing else is.

Princes do but play us; compared to this,

All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy.

               Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,

               In that the world's contracted thus.

         Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be

         To warm the world, that's done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;

This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.

"Adam's Curse" by William Butler Yeats

We sat together at one summer’s end,

That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,   

And you and I, and talked of poetry.

I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;

Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,   

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.   

Better go down upon your marrow-bones   

And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones   

Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;   

For to articulate sweet sounds together

Is to work harder than all these, and yet   

Be thought an idler by the noisy set

Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen   

The martyrs call the world.’

                                          And thereupon

That beautiful mild woman for whose sake   

There’s many a one shall find out all heartache   

On finding that her voice is sweet and low   

Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know—

Although they do not talk of it at school—

That we must labour to be beautiful.’

I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing   

Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.

There have been lovers who thought love should be   

So much compounded of high courtesy   

That they would sigh and quote with learned looks   

Precedents out of beautiful old books;   

Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;   

We saw the last embers of daylight die,   

And in the trembling blue-green of the sky   

A moon, worn as if it had been a shell   

Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell   

About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:   

That you were beautiful, and that I strove   

To love you in the old high way of love;

That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown   

As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.