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Archives - April 2007

April 1, 2007

To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie -
True Poems flee -

– Emily Dickinson, "To See the Summer Sky"

April 2, 2007

ever been kidnapped
by a poet
if i were a poet
i'd kidnap you
put you in my phrases and meter

– Nikki Giovanni, "kidnap poem"

April 3, 2007

O Learn to read what silent love hath writ:
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.

– William Shakespeare, "Sonnet XXIII"

April 4, 2007

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

– Theodore Roethke, "The Waking"

April 5, 2007

On life's vast ocean diversely we sail,
Reason the card, but passion is the gale.

– Alexander Pope, "Moral Essays, I"

April 6, 2007

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.

– Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Love"

April 7, 2007

Forever nameless
Forever unknown
Forever unconceived
Forever unrepresented
yet forever felt in the soul.

– D. H. Lawrence, "Belief"

April 8, 2007

Bliss was it that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven.

– William Wordsworth, "French Revolution"

April 9, 2007

STRANGER! if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you
not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you?

– Walt Whitman, "To You"

April 10, 2007

Errors like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls must dive below.

– John Dryden, "All For Love"

April 11, 2007

Sometimes when I'm lonely,
Don't know why,
Keep thinkin' I won't be lonely
By and by.

– Langston Hughes, "Hope"

April 12, 2007

Sing we for love and idleness,
Naught else is worth the having.

– Ezra Pound, "An immortality"

April 13, 2007

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

– Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise"

April 14, 2007

I am two fools, I know
For loving, and for saying so
In Whining poetry.

– John Donne, "The Triple Fool"

April 15, 2007

Why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true.
Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt
It will turn true again, for so it goes.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favour.

– Robert Frost, "The Black Cottage"

April 16, 2007

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

– Kahlil Gibran,"The Prophet"

April 17, 2007

Too low they build, who build beneath the stars.

– Edward Young, "Night Thoughts"

April 18, 2007

Throw away the lights, the definitions,
And say of what you see in the dark
That it is this or that it is that,
But do not use the rotted names.

– Wallace Stevens, "The Man with the Blue Guitar"

April 19, 2007

We don't have to know,
only to be:
let go the jumble of worn words,
reason and vanity.

– Hilda Doolittle, "Star by Day"

April 20, 2007

What reinforcement we may gain from hope;
If not, what resolution from despair.

– John Milton, PARADISE LOST, bk. 1, l. 190-1

April 21, 2007

To be in love
Is to touch things with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.

– Gwendolyn Brooks, "To Be in Love"

April 22, 2007

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees.

– Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"

April 23, 2007

The drying up a single tear has more
Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore.

– George Gordon, Lord Byron, "Don Juan," cto. 8, st. 3

April 24, 2007

Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings are not free
From the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile.

– Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Stanzas-April 1814" (l. 29-32)

April 25, 2007

Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.

– Philip Larkin, "I Remember, I Remember"

April 26, 2007

Shed no tear-O shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more-O weep no more!
Young buds sleep in the root's white core.

– John Keats, "Faery Songs"

April 27, 2007

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

– T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

April 28, 2007

Marvelous Truth, confront us
at every turn,
in every guise

– Denise Levertov, "Matins"

April 29, 2007

In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it.

– Alexander Smith, "City Poem: The Fear of Dying"

April 30, 2007

literature and opera are full of
characters who die for love:
i stay alive for her.

– Gerald Locklin, "No Longer a Teenager"