The Common Road

I want to travel the common road
With the great crowd surging by,
Where there's many a laugh and many a load,
And many a smile and sigh.
I want to be on the common way
With its endless tramping feet,
In the summer bright and winter gray,
In the noonday sun and heat.
In the cool of evening with shadows nigh,
At dawn, when the sun breaks clear,
I want the great crowd passing by,
To ken what they see and hear.
I want to be one of the common herd,
Not live in a sheltered way,
Want to be thrilled, want to be stirred
By the great crowd day by day;
To glimpse the restful valleys deep,
To toil up the rugged hill,
To see the brooks which shyly creep,
To have the torrents thrill.
I want to laugh with the common man
Wherever he chance to be,
I want to aid him when I can
Whenever there's need of me.
I want to lend a helping hand
Over the rough and steep
To a child too young to understand--
To comfort those who weep.
I want to live and work and plan
With the great crowd surging by,
To mingle with the common man,
No better or worse than I.

              ~ Silas H. Perkins

The Loom of Time

Man's life is laid in the loom of time
  To a pattern he does not see,
While the weavers work and the shuttles fly
   Till the dawn of eternity.

Some shuttles are filled with silver threads
   And some with threads of gold,
While often but the darker hues
   Are all that they may hold.

But the weaver watches with skillful eye
   Each shuttle fly to and fro,
And sees the pattern so deftly wrought
   As the loom moves sure and slow.

God surely planned the pattern:
   Each thread, the dark and fair,
Is chosen by His master skill
   And placed in the web with care.

He only knows its beauty,
   And guides the shuttles which hold
The threads so unattractive,
   As well as the threads of gold.

Not till each loom is silent,
   And the shuttles cease to fly,
Shall God reveal the pattern
   And explain the reason why

The dark threads were as needful
   In the weaver's skillful hand
As the threads of gold and silver
   For the pattern which He planned.

                          ~ Unknown

I Love You

    I love you for what you are, but I
love you yet more for what you are
going to be.
    I love you not so much for your
realities as for your ideals. I pray for
your desires that they may be great,
rather than for your satisfactions,
which may be hazardously little.
    A satisfied flower is one whose pet-
als are about to fall. The most beauti-
ful rose is one hardly more than a bud
wherein the pangs and ecstasies of de-
sire are working for larger and finer
growth.
    Not always shall you be what you
are now.
    You are going forward toward some-
thing great. I am on the way with you
and therefore I love you.
                          ~ Carl Sandburg

The Sea

The sea, the sea, the open sea,
The blue, the fresh, the ever free;
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth's wide regions
      round.
It plays with the clouds, it mocks the
      skies,
Or like a cradled creature lies.
I'm on the sea, I'm on the sea,
I am where I would ever be,
With the blue above and the blue
      below,
And silence wheresoever I go.
If a storm should come and awake the
      deep,
What matter? I shall ride and sleep.

I love, oh! how I love to ride
On the fierce, foaming bursting tide,
Where every mad wave drowns the
      moon,
And whistles aloft its tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the southwest wind doth
      blow!
I never was on the dull, tame shore
But I loved the great sea more and
      more,
And backward flew to her billowy
      breast,
Like a bird that seeketh her mother's
      nest,--
And a mother she was and is to me,
For I was born on the open sea.

        ~ Barry Cornwall

What Is Poetry?

Poetry is the universal language
which the heart holds with nature
    and itself.
He who has a contempt for poetry
cannot have much respect for
    himself or for anything else . . .
for all that is worth remembering
    in life is the poetry of it.

Fear is poetry, hope is poetry, love
    is poetry, hatred is poetry;
contempt, jealousy, remorse,
    admiration, wonder, pity,
despair, or madness are all poetry.

  ~ William Hazlitt [1778-1830]

Wind In The Pine

Oh, I can hear you, God, above the cry
         Of tossing trees--
Rolling your windy tides across the sky,
         And splashing your silver seas
               Over the pine,
         To the water line
               Of the moon.
Oh, I can hear you, God,
Above the wail of the lonely loon--
When the pine tops pitch and nod--
    Chanting your melodies
Of ghostly waterfalls and avalanches,
Swashing your wind among the branches
    To make them pure and white.

Wash over me, God, with your piney breeze,
    And your moon's wet silver pool;
Wash over me, God, with your wind and night
    And leave me clean and cool.

                       ~ Lew Sarett

Something Told The Wild Geese

Something told the wild geese
    It was time to go.
Though the fields lay golden
    Something whispered,--"Snow."
Leaves were green and stirring,
    Berries, luster-glossed,
But beneath warm feathers
    Something cautioned,--"Frost."
All the sagging orchards
    Steamed with amber spice,
But each wild breast stiffened
    At remembered ice.
Something told the wild geese
    It was time to fly,--
Summer sun was on their wings,
    Winter in their cry.

   ~ Rachel Field

A Sea Song

A wet sheet and a flowing sea;
    A wind that follows fast,
And fills the white and rustling sail
    And bends the gallant mast;
And bends the gallant mast, my boys,
    While like the eagle free,
Away the good ship flies, and leaves
    Old England on the lee.

O for a soft and gentle wind!
    I heard a fair one cry;
But give to me the snoring breeze
    And white waves heaving high;
And white waves heaving high, my lads,
    The good ship light and free--
The world of waters is our home,
    And merry men are we.

There's tempest in yon horned moon,
    And lightning in yon cloud;
But hark the music, mariners!
    The wind is piping loud;
The wind is piping loud, my boys,
    The lightning flashes free--
While the hollow oak our palace is,
    Our heritage--the sea.

      ~ Allan Cunningham

Song

When I am dead, my dearest,
    Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
    Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
    With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
    And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
    I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
    Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
    That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember
    And haply may forget.

   ~ Christina Georgina Rossetti

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

  ~ Robert Frost

Up-Hill

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
   Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole
      long day?
   From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-
      place?
   A roof for when the slow dark hours
          begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my
      face?
   You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
   Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just
      in sight?
   They will not keep you standing at
      that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and
      weak?
   Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who
      seek?
   Yea, beds for all who come.

   ~ Christina Georgina Rossetti

The Way Through The Woods

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the
       woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badger rolls at ease,
There was once a way through the
       woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night air cools on the trout-
       ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the
       wood. . . .
But there is no road through the woods!

   ~ Rudyard Kipling