https://lstd.to/@alliswellinthegreatmess/tags/poem/Posts tagged poem on All Is Well in the Great MessHugoen-USMon, 27 Mar 2023 11:51:52 +0000https://lstd.to/@alliswellinthegreatmess/posts/dont-quit/Sun, 12 Mar 2023 17:25:58 +0000https://lstd.to/@alliswellinthegreatmess/posts/dont-quit/<blockquote>
<p>When things go wrong as they sometimes will,<br>
When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill,<br>
When the funds are low and the debts are high<br>
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,<br>
When care is pressing you down a bit,<br>
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit</p>
<p>Life is strange with its twists and turns<br>
As every one of us sometimes learns<br>
And many a failure comes about<br>
When he might have won had he stuck it out;<br>
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow<br>
You may succeed with another blow.</p>
<p>Success is failure turned inside out<br>
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,<br>
And you never can tell just how close you are,<br>
It may be near when it seems so far;<br>
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit<br>
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.</p>
<p>For all the sad words of tongue or pen,<br>
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”</p>
<cite>
<b>John Greenleaf Whittier (1807- 1892)</b>
</cite>
</blockquote>
https://lstd.to/@alliswellinthegreatmess/posts/leaves/Wed, 22 Jun 2022 16:22:35 +0000https://lstd.to/@alliswellinthegreatmess/posts/leaves/<blockquote>
<p>The prisoners of infinite choice<br>
Have built their house<br>
In a field below the wood<br>
And are at peace.</p>
<p>It is autumn, and dead leaves<br>
On their way to the river<br>
Scratch like birds at the windows<br>
Or tick on the road.</p>
<p>Somewhere there is an afterlife<br>
Of dead leaves,<br>
A stadium filled with an infinite<br>
Rustling and sighing.</p>
<p>Somewhere in the heaven<br>
Of lost futures<br>
The lives we might have led<br>
Have found their own fulfilment.<br>
<cite><br>
<b>Derek Mahon</b>, The Snow Party (Oxford University Press 1975).<br>
</cite></p>
</blockquote>
https://lstd.to/@alliswellinthegreatmess/posts/the-road-not-taken-by-robert-frost/Sun, 05 Sep 2021 11:16:27 +0000https://lstd.to/@alliswellinthegreatmess/posts/the-road-not-taken-by-robert-frost/<p>Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,<br>
And sorry I could not travel both<br>
And be one traveler, long I stood<br>
And looked down one as far as I could<br>
To where it bent in the undergrowth;</p>
<p>Then took the other, as just as fair,<br>
And having perhaps the better claim,<br>
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;<br>
Though as for that the passing there<br>
Had worn them really about the same,</p>
<p>And both that morning equally lay<br>
In leaves no step had trodden black.<br>
Oh, I kept the first for another day!<br>
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,<br>
I doubted if I should ever come back.</p>
<p>I shall be telling this with a sigh<br>
Somewhere ages and ages hence:<br>
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—<br>
I took the one less traveled by,<br>
And that has made all the difference.</p>
<p><em>Source: <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1915/08/a-group-of-poems/306620/">Robert Frost, “A Group of Poems”, The Atlantic Monthly (August 1915).</a>
</em></p>
https://lstd.to/@alliswellinthegreatmess/posts/invictus-by-william-ernest-henley/Fri, 03 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://lstd.to/@alliswellinthegreatmess/posts/invictus-by-william-ernest-henley/<p>Out of the night that covers me,<br>
Black as the pit from pole to pole,<br>
I thank whatever gods may be<br>
For my unconquerable soul.</p>
<p>In the fell clutch of circumstance<br>
I have not winced nor cried aloud.<br>
Under the bludgeonings of chance<br>
My head is bloody, but unbowed.</p>
<p>Beyond this place of wrath and tears<br>
Looms but the Horror of the shade,<br>
And yet the menace of the years<br>
Finds and shall find me unafraid.</p>
<p>It matters not how strait the gate,<br>
How charged with punishments the scroll,<br>
I am the master of my fate,<br>
I am the captain of my soul.</p>
<p><em>Source: <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hwk9sr">Henley, William Ernest (July 17, 1889). A book of verses. New York.</a>
</em></p>
https://lstd.to/@alliswellinthegreatmess/posts/if-by-rudyard-kipling/Sat, 03 Jul 2021 14:10:48 +0000https://lstd.to/@alliswellinthegreatmess/posts/if-by-rudyard-kipling/<div>
<div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">If you can keep your head when all about you   <br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
     Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   <br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
 If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
     But make allowance for their doubting too;   <br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
 If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
     Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
 Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
     And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;"><br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
 If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   <br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
     If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   <br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
 If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
     And treat those two impostors just the same;   <br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
 If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
     Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
 Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
     And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;"><br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
 If you can make one heap of all your winnings<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
     And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
 And lose, and start again at your beginnings<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
     And never breathe a word about your loss;<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
 If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
     To serve your turn long after they are gone,   <br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
 And so hold on when there is nothing in you<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
     Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;"><br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
 If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   <br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
     Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
 If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
     If all men count with you, but none too much;<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
 If you can fill the unforgiving minute<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
     With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   <br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
 Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   <br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;">
     And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!<br></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em;"><br></div>
</div>
<p><em>Source: A Choice of Kipling’s Verse (1943)</em></p>
https://lstd.to/@alliswellinthegreatmess/posts/the-little-duck-by-donald-c-babcock/Wed, 21 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://lstd.to/@alliswellinthegreatmess/posts/the-little-duck-by-donald-c-babcock/<iframe width="100%" height="300" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/soundcloud%253Atracks%253A2398626633&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true"></iframe><div style="font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc;line-break: anywhere;word-break: normal;overflow: hidden;white-space: nowrap;text-overflow: ellipsis; font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif;font-weight: 100;"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/alliswellinthegreatmess" title="All Is Well In The Great Mess" target="_blank" style="color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;">All Is Well In The Great Mess</a> · <a href="https://soundcloud.com/alliswellinthegreatmess/edward-espe-brown-the-little" title="Edward Espe Brown - The Little Duck" target="_blank" style="color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;">Edward Espe Brown - The Little Duck</a></div>
<p>Now we’re ready to look at something pretty special.<br>
It is a duck,<br>
riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf.<br>
No it isn’t a gull.<br>
A gull always has a raucous touch about him.<br>
This is some sort of duck,<br>
and he cuddles in the swells.</p>
<p>He isn’t cold,<br>
and he is thinking things over.<br>
There is a big heaving in the Atlantic,<br>
and he is a part of it.</p>
<p>He looks a bit like a mandarin,<br>
or the Lord Buddha meditating under the Bo tree.</p>
<p>But he has hardly enough above the eyes<br>
to be a philosopher.<br>
He has poise, however,<br>
which is what philosophers must have.</p>
<p>He can rest while the Atlantic heaves,<br>
because he rests in the Atlantic.</p>
<p>Probably he doesn’t know how large the ocean is.<br>
And neither do you.<br>
But he realizes it.</p>
<p>And what does he do, I ask you?<br>
He sits down in it!<br>
He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity<br>
– which it is.<br>
He has made himself a part of the boundless<br>
by easing himself into just where it touches him.</p>
<p>I like the duck.<br>
He doesn’t know much,<br>
but he’s got religion.</p>