Friday Poetry: Robert Frost

Happy Friday!

My chosen poem this week is by the poet Robert Frost who was one of the United States’ best loved poets and playwrights. He had four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry and a Congressional Gold Medal.

The Road Not Taken

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. 

Robert Frost

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Friday Poetry: Henry David Thoreau

Happy Friday!

My chosen poem this week is by Henry David Thoreau born 12th July 1817 and died 6th May 1862. Thoreau was an American essayist, poet and philosopher.

Men Say They Know Many Things

Men say they know many things;
But lo! They have taken wings,-
The arts and the sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that anybody knows. 

Henry David Thoreau

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Friday Poetry: Salena Godden

Happy Friday Everyone!

My chosen poem this week is a new to me poet. Salena Godden (1969) is an English poet, author, activist, broadcaster, memoirist and essayist.

Courage is a Muscle

Courage is the muscle
we use when we speak,
if we're being talked over
and told we're too weak.
And when we get weary
and when it gets tough,
it's our united courage says -
Enough is enough.

Courage is the muscle
we work night and day, 
to get equal rights
to get equal pay.
Our blood is taxed
our blood is shame,
our courage unites us
for we all bleed the same. 

Courage is the muscle
we flex when we must,
courage is the muscle
for truth and for trust.
Courage is the muscle 
we use when we speak,
if we're being walked over
and told we're too weak.

And when we get weary
we march side by side,
1000 years we're still marching
with courage and with pride. 

Salena Godden

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Friday Poetry: A. E. Housman

Happy Friday Everyone!

My chosen poem this week is by one of my favourite poets.

You Smile Upon Your Friend To-day

You smile upon your friend to-day,
To-day his ills are over;
You hearken to the lover's say,
And happy is the lover.

'Tis late to hearken, late to smile,
But better late than never:
I shall have lived a little while
Before I die for ever. 

A. E. Housman

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Friday Poetry: D. H. Lawrence

Happy Friday!

I have had a super busy day with my Etsy business and I am looking forward to the weekend.

My chosen poem this week is by David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930) who was an English writer and poet.

Escape

When we get out of the glass bottles of our own ego,
and when we escape like squirrels from turning in the 
cages of our personality
and get into the forest again, 
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves. 

Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,
we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt
paper.

D. H. Lawrence

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Friday Poetry: Sheenagh Pugh

Happy Friday!

I hope everyone has had a good day. I am really looking forward to the weekend.

My chosen poem this week is by the British poet, novelist and translator who writes in English, Sheenagh Pugh (1950).

What If This Road

What if this road, that has held no surprises
these many years, decided not to go
home after all; what if it could turn
left or right with no more ado
than a kite-tail? What if its tarry skin
were like a long, supple bolt of cloth,
that is shaken and rolled out, and takes
a new shape from the contours beneath?
And if it chose to lay itself down
in a new way, around a blind corner,
across hills you must climb without knowing
what's on the other side, who would not hanker
to be going, at all risks? Who wants to know
a story's end, or where a road will go?

Sheenagh Pugh

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Friday Poetry: Rabindranath Tagore

Happy Friday Everyone!

My chosen poem this week is by the Bengali polymath who worked as poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher. social reformer, and painter, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941).

Light

Light, my light, the world-filling light,
the eye-kissing light,
heart-sweetening light!

Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the centre of my life;
the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love;
the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the 
earth.

The butterflies spread their sails on the sea of light.
Lillies and jasmines surge up on the crest of the waves of 
light.

The light is shattered into gold on every cloud, my
darling,
and it scatters gems in profusion.

Mirth spreads from leaf to leaf, my darling,
and gladness without measure.
The heaven's river has drowned its banks
and the flood of joy is abroad.

Rabindranath Tagore

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Friday Poetry: Edward Thomas

Happy Friday!

My chosen poem this week is by the English poet and writer Philip Edward Thomas (1878-1917).

Beauty

What does it means? Tired, angry, and ill at ease,
No man, woman, or child alive could please
Me now. And yet I almost dare to laugh
Because I sit and frame an epitaph -
'Here lies all that no one loved of him
And that loved no one.' Then in a trice that whim
Has wearied. But, though I am like a river
At fall of evening while it seems that never
Has the sun lighted it or warmed it, while
Cross breezes cut the surface to a file,
This heart, some fraction of me, happily
Floats through the window even now to a tree
Down in the missing, dim-lit, quiet vale,
Not like a pewit that returns to wail
For something it has lost, but like a dove
That slants unswerving to its home and love.
There I find my rest, as through the dusk air
Flies what yet lives in me: Beauty is there. 

Edward Thomas

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Friday Poetry: Clarissa Scott Delany

Happy Friday Everyone!

My chosen poem this week is by the African-American poet, essayist, educator and social worker, Clarissa Scott Delany (1901-1927).

Joy

Joy shakes me like the wind that lifts a sail,
Like the roistering wind
That laughs through stalwart pines.
It floods me like the sun
On rain-drenched trees
That flash with silver and green.

I abandon myself to joy -
I laugh - I sing.
Too long have I walked a desolate way,
Too long stumbled down a maze
Bewildered. 

Clarissa Scott Delany

Happy Reading

Etsy

If you enjoy reading my blog and would like to make a donation I would be very grateful. Thank you

Friday Poetry: Gillian Clarke

Happy Friday Everyone!

My chosen poem this week is the Welsh poet and playwright Gillian Clarke (1937).

Ode to Joy

Exultation! Salutation
to the long midsummer days,
to the light lost by the minute,
sing, and sing the dark away.

In the park the lovers listen,
blackbird's last song of the day.
Bats are scribbling verse on twilight.
Owls are calling, Kyrie.

Soon a gathering of swallows,
like a stanza on a wire,
voices rising in crescendo,
in hall and stadium and choir.

In the theatre of summer
stars ascending in their arc,
company and conversation.
Sing, and sing away the dark!

Gillian Clarke