Friday Poetry: William Ernest Henley

Happy Friday!

I hope everyone is looking forward to the weekend.

My chosen poem this week is by the English poet, writer, critic and editor William Ernest Henley (1849-1903).

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me, 
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Friday Poetry: Edith Wharton

Happy Friday!

I have had a busy day today with work and I have a busy weekend with work as well but I am hoping for some reading time as well.

My chosen poem this week is by American writer and designer Edith Wharton born Edith Newbold Jones (1862-1937).

Patience

PATIENCE and I have traveled hand in hand
So many days that I have grown to trace
The lines of sad, sweet beauty in her face,
And all its veiled depths to understand.

Not beautiful is she to eyes profane;
Silent and unrevealed her holy charms;
But, like a mother's, her serene, strong arms
Uphold my footsteps on the path of pain.

I long to cry, - her soft voice whispers, "Nay!"
I seek to fly, but she restrains my feet;
In wisdom stern, yet in compassion sweet,
She guides my helpless wanderings, day by day.

O my Beloved, life's golden visions fade,
And one by one life's phantoms joys depart;
They leave a sudden darkness in the heart,
And patience fills their empty place instead. 

Edith Wharton

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Friday Poetry: Ann Gray

Happy Friday Everyone!

My chosen poem today is by the poet Ann Gray (1946).

Love Listen

Let's love, listen, take time
when time is all we have. 
Let's be unafraid to be kind,
learn to disregard the bad
if the good outweighs it daily.
Let's make a gift of silence,
the day's hushing into dark,
and when we hold each other
let's always be astonished
we are where we want to be.
Let's hope to age together,
but if we can't, let's promise now 
to remember how we shone
when we were at our best,
when we were most ourselves.

Ann Gray

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: Jane Hirshfield

Happy Friday Everyone!

I hope everyone has some fun plans for the weekend.

My chosen poem this week is by the American poet, essayist and translator Jane Hirshfield (1953).

August Day

You work with what you are given -
today I am blessed, today I am given luck.

It takes the shape of a dozen ripening fruit trees,
a curtain of pole beans, a thicket of berries.
It takes the shape of a dozen empty hours.

In them is neither love nor love's muster of losses,
in them is no chance for harm or for good.
Does even my humanness matter?
A bear would be equally happy, this August day,
fat on the simple sweetness plucked between thorns.

There are some who may think, "how pitiful, how 
lonely."
Others must murmer, "How lazy."

I agree with them all: pitiful, lonely, lazy.
Lost to the earth and to heaven,
thoroughly drunk on its whiskeys, I wander my kingdom.

Jane Hirshfield

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: Cecil Day-Lewis

Happy Friday!

I hope everyone has some fun plans for the weekend.

My chosen poem today is by the Anglo-Irish poet and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1968 until his death in 1972, Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-1972). He also wrote mystery stories under the name Nicholas Blake.

Walking Away

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day -
A sunny day with leaves just turning, 
The touch-lines new-ruled - since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be. 

That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature's give-and-take - the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one's irresolute clay.

I have had worse partings, but none that so 
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show -
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go. 

Cecil Day-Lewis

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: Sylvia Plath

Happy Friday!

I hope everyone has had a good week so far.

My chosen poem this week is one I studied at school and is by the American poet, novelist and short story writer Sylvia Plath (1932-1963).

Morning Song

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements. 

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons. 

Sylvia Plath

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: Emily Bronte

Happy Friday Everyone!

I hope everyone has had a good week so far. I have been getting in some reading this week which has been nice.

My chosen poem this week is by Emily Bronte who is favourite of mine.

Love and Friendship

Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly-tree -
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom most constantly?

The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again
And who will call the wild-briar far?

Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now
And deck thee with the holly's sheen,
That when December blights thy brow
He still may leave thy garland green.

Emily Bronte

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: Robert Louis Stevenson

Happy Friday Everyone!

I hope everyone has had a good week and is looking forward to the weekend.

My chosen poem this week is by one of my favourites, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894).

Escape at Bedtime

The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out
Through the blinds and the windows and bars;
And high overhead and all moving about,
There were thousands of millions of stars.
There ne'er were such thousands of leaves on a tree, 
Nor of people in church or the Park,
As the crowds of the stars that looked down upon me,
And that glittered and winked in the dark.

The Dog, and the Plough, and the Hunter, and all,
And the star of the sailor, and Mars,
There shone in the sky, and the pail by the wall
Would be half full of water and stars. 
They saw me at last, and they chased me with cries,
And they soon had me packed into bed;
But the glory kept shining and bright in my eyes,
And the stars going round in my head. 

Robert Louis Stevenson

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: Virginia Woolf

Happy Friday Everyon!

I have some fabulous book plans for the weekend so I hope you all do as well.

My chosen poem this week is by the English writer Virginia Woolf (1882-1941). Now I will be honest, I’m not over fond of Virginia Woolf as I just don’t seem to get on with her writing style but I do love this poem.

Let Us Go, Then, Exploring

Let us go, then exploring
This summer morning,
When all are adoring
The plum blossom and the bee.
And humming and hawing
Let us ask of the starling
What he may think
On the brink
Of the dustbin whence he picks
Among the sticks
Combings of scullion's hair.
What's life, we ask;
Life, Life, Life! cries the bird
As if he had heard. 

Virginia Woolf

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: Edna St. Vincent Millay

Happy Friday!

I hope everyone has some fun plans for the weekend. I now only have one more week of school and I am so excited to gain more reading time over the summer holidays.

My chosen poem today is by the American lyrical poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950).

Afternoon on a Hill

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one. 

I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise. 

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine, 
And then start down!

Edna St. Vincent Millay