Weekly/Fortnightly Poetry Suggestions

Short Poetry Collections, Short Story Collections, and our Weekly Poetry Project
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TriciaG
LibriVox Admin Team
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Post by TriciaG »

This one would make a great Father's Day poem:

The Man to Be, by Edgar A. Guest (unfortunately, he died in 1959, so not PD for Life+70 countries)
https://archive.org/details/rhymesofchildhoo00gues/page/56/mode/2up

The Man to Be

Some day the world will need a man of courage
in a time of doubt,

And somewhere, as a little boy, that future hero
plays about.

Within some humble home, no doubt, that instru-
ment of greater things

Now climbs upon his father’s knee or to his
mother’s garments clings

And when shall come that call for him to render
service that is fine,

He that shall do God’s mission here may be your
little boy or mine.

Long years of preparation mark the pathway for
the splendid souls.

And generations live and die and seem no nearer
to their goals,

And yet the purpose of it all, the fleeting pleasure
and the woe.

The laughter and the grief of life that all who
come to earth must know

May be to pave the way for one — one man to
serve the Will Divine

And it is possible that he may be your little boy
or mine.

Some day the world will need a man! I stand
beside his cot at night

And wonder if I’m teaching him, as best I can,
to know the right.

I am the father of a boy — his life is mine to
make or mar —

For he no better can become than what my daily
teachings are;

There will be need for someone great — I dare
not falter from the line —

The man that is to serve the world may be that
little boy of mine.

Perhaps your boy or mine may not ascend the
lofty heights of fame;

The orders for their births are hid. We know
not why to earth they came;

Yet in some little bed to-night the great man of
to-morrow sleeps

And only He who sent him here, the secret of
His purpose keeps.

As fathers then our care is this — to keep in mind
the Great Design —

The man the world shall need some day may be
your little boy or mine.
Serial novel: The Wandering Jew
Medieval England meets Civil War Americans: Centuries Apart
Humor: My Lady Nicotine
SouCS
Posts: 9
Joined: April 8th, 2018, 4:58 am

Post by SouCS »

ROSE-MOSS By Hilda Conkling

Little Rose-moss beside the stone,
Are you lonely in the garden?
There are no friends of you,
And the birds are gone.
Shall I pick you?"

"Little girl up by the hollyhock,
I am not lonely.
I feel the sun burning,
I hold light in my cup,
I have all the rain I want,
I think things to myself that you don't know,
And I listen to the talk of crickets.
I am not lonely,
But you may pick me
And take me to your mother."


https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1612/1612-h/1612-h.htm#link2H_4_0018

MC note... this would not be PD for us, Hilda Conkling died in 1986, only 34 years ago.
Gyan
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Joined: May 7th, 2020, 11:10 am
Contact:

Post by Gyan »

ODE TO DUTY - By William Wordsworth
https://www.bartleby.com/101/531.html
Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!
O Duty! if that name thou love
Who art a light to guide, a rod
To check the erring, and reprove;
Thou, who art victory and law
When empty terrors overawe;
From vain temptations dost set free;
And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity!

There are who ask not if thine eye
Be on them; who, in love and truth,
Where no misgiving is, rely
Upon the genial sense of youth:
Glad Hearts! without reproach or blot;
Who do thy work, and know it not:
Oh! if through confidence misplaced
They fail, thy saving arms, dread Power! around them cast.

Serene will be our days and bright,
And happy will our nature be,
When love is an unerring light,
And joy its own security.
And they a blissful course may hold
Even now, who, not unwisely bold,
Live in the spirit of this creed;
Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need.

I, loving freedom, and untried;
No sport of every random gust,
Yet being to myself a guide,
Too blindly have reposed my trust:
And oft, when in my heart was heard
Thy timely mandate, I deferred
The task, in smoother walks to stray;
But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may.

Through no disturbance of my soul,
Or strong compunction in me wrought,
I supplicate for thy control;
But in the quietness of thought:
Me this unchartered freedom tires;
I feel the weight of chance-desires:
My hopes no more must change their name,
I long for a repose that ever is the same.

Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face:
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.

To humbler functions, awful Power!
I call thee: I myself commend
Unto thy guidance from this hour;
Oh, let my weakness have an end!
Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice;
The confidence of reason give;
And in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live!
Gyan Moorthy
Ambsweet13
Posts: 517
Joined: May 18th, 2020, 12:55 pm
Location: Massachusetts, USA

Post by Ambsweet13 »

I found this poem in a collection on Project Gutenberg. Maybe I could try my hand at coordinating with this one as a weekly or fortnightly poem?


THE BEST FRIEND

If I was sad, then he had grief, as well—
Seeking my hands with soft insistent paw,
Searching my face with anxious eyes that saw
More than my halting, human speech could tell;
Eyes wide with wisdom, fine, compassionate—
Dear, loyal one, that knew not wrong nor hate.
If I made merry—then how he would strive
To show his joy; "Good master, let's to play,
The world is ours," that gladsome bark would say;
"Just yours and mine—'tis fun to be alive!"
Our world ... four walls above the city's din,
My crutch the bar that ever held us in.
Whate'er my mood—the fretful word, or sweet,
The swift command, the wheedling undertone,
His faith was fixed, his love was mine, alone,
His heaven was here at my slow crippled feet:
Oh, friend thrice-lost; oh, fond heart unassailed,
Ye taught me trust when man's dull logic failed.

-Meribah Abbott.


https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19226/19226-h/19226-h.htm
A.M.B. :roll:

Between illnesses, work, and vacation, May wasn't my best Librivox month. But I'm back and ready to do some more recording, editing, and PLing!
Ambsweet13
Posts: 517
Joined: May 18th, 2020, 12:55 pm
Location: Massachusetts, USA

Post by Ambsweet13 »

Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost

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 today.
Nothing gold can stay.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58611
A.M.B. :roll:

Between illnesses, work, and vacation, May wasn't my best Librivox month. But I'm back and ready to do some more recording, editing, and PLing!
Ambsweet13
Posts: 517
Joined: May 18th, 2020, 12:55 pm
Location: Massachusetts, USA

Post by Ambsweet13 »

Faces: By Walt Whitman

Sauntering the pavement, or riding the country by-road--lo! such faces!
Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality;
The spiritual, prescient face--the always welcome, common, benevolent face,
The face of the singing of music--the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges, broad at the back-top;
The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows--the shaved blanch'd faces of orthodox citizens;
The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist's face;
The ugly face of some beautiful Soul, the handsome detested or despised face;
The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of many children;
The face of an amour, the face of veneration;
The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock;
The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face;
A wild hawk, his wings clipp'd by the clipper;
A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the gelder.

Sauntering the pavement, thus, or crossing the ceaseless ferry, faces, and faces, and faces:
I see them, and complain not, and am content with all.

Do you suppose I could be content with all, if I thought them their own finale?

This now is too lamentable a face for a man;
Some abject louse, asking leave to be--cringing for it;
Some milk-nosed maggot, blessing what lets it wrig to its hole.

This face is a dog's snout, sniffing for garbage;
Snakes nest in that mouth--I hear the sibilant threat.

This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea;
Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go.

This is a face of bitter herbs--this an emetic--they need no label;
And more of the drug-shelf, laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog's-lard.

This face is an epilepsy, its wordless tongue gives out the unearthly cry,
Its veins down the neck distended, its eyes roll till they show nothing but their whites,
Its teeth grit, the palms of the hands are cut by the turn'd-in nails,
The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground while he speculates well.

This face is bitten by vermin and worms,
And this is some murderer's knife, with a half-pull'd scabbard.

This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee;
An unceasing death-bell tolls there.

Those then are really men--the bosses and tufts of the great round globe!

Features of my equals, would you trick me with your creas'd and cadaverous march?
Well, you cannot trick me.

I see your rounded, never-erased flow;
I see neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises.

Splay and twist as you like--poke with the tangling fores of fishes or rats;
You'll be unmuzzled, you certainly will.

I saw the face of the most smear'd and slobbering idiot they had at the asylum;
And I knew for my consolation what they knew not;
I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother,
The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement;
And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,
And I shall meet the real landlord, perfect and unharm'd, every inch as good as myself.

The Lord advances, and yet advances;
Always the shadow in front--always the reach'd hand bringing up the laggards.

Out of this face emerge banners and horses--O superb! I see what is coming;
I see the high pioneer-caps--I see the staves of runners clearing the way,
I hear victorious drums.

This face is a life-boat;
This is the face commanding and bearded, it asks no odds of the rest;
This face is flavor'd fruit, ready for eating;
This face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of all good.

These faces bear testimony, slumbering or awake;
They show their descent from the Master himself.

Off the word I have spoken, I except not one--red, white, black, are all deific;
In each house is the ovum--it comes forth after a thousand years.

Spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me;
Tall and sufficient stand behind, and make signs to me;
I read the promise, and patiently wait.

This is a full-grown lily's face,
She speaks to the limber-hipp'd man near the garden pickets,
Come here, she blushingly cries--Come nigh to me, limber-hipp'd man,
Stand at my side till I lean as high as I can upon you,
Fill me with albescent honey, bend down to me,
Rub to me with your chafing beard, rub to my breast and shoulders.

The old face of the mother of many children!
Whist! I am fully content.

Lull'd and late is the smoke of the First-day morning,
It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences,
It hangs thin by the sassafras, the wild-cherry, and the cat-brier under them.

I saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree,
I heard what the singers were singing so long,
Heard who sprang in crimson youth from the white froth and the water-blue,

Behold a woman!
She looks out from her quaker cap--her face is clearer and more beautiful than the sky.

She sits in an arm-chair, under the shaded porch of the farmhouse,
The sun just shines on her old white head.

Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen,
Her grandsons raised the flax, and her granddaughters spun it with the distaff and the wheel.

The melodious character of the earth,
The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go, and does not wish to go,
The justified mother of men.

https://www.public-domain-poetry.com/walt-whitman/faces-859
A.M.B. :roll:

Between illnesses, work, and vacation, May wasn't my best Librivox month. But I'm back and ready to do some more recording, editing, and PLing!
Ambsweet13
Posts: 517
Joined: May 18th, 2020, 12:55 pm
Location: Massachusetts, USA

Post by Ambsweet13 »

Sleep Is Supposed To Be: By Emily Dickinson

Sleep is supposed to be,
By souls of sanity,
The shutting of the eye.

Sleep is the station grand
Down which on either hand
The hosts of witness stand!

Morn is supposed to be,
By people of degree,
The breaking of the day.

Morning has not occurred!
That shall aurora be
East of eternity;

One with the banner gay,
One in the red array, --
That is the break of day.

https://www.bartleby.com/113/4038.html

* https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12242
A.M.B. :roll:

Between illnesses, work, and vacation, May wasn't my best Librivox month. But I'm back and ready to do some more recording, editing, and PLing!
Ambsweet13
Posts: 517
Joined: May 18th, 2020, 12:55 pm
Location: Massachusetts, USA

Post by Ambsweet13 »

Calico Pie. By Edward Lear

I.

Calico pie,
The little birds fly
Down to the calico-tree:
Their wings were blue,
And they sang "Tilly-loo!"
Till away they flew;
And they never came back to me!
They never came back,
They never came back,
They never came back to me!


II.

Calico jam,
The little Fish swam
Over the Syllabub Sea.
He took off his hat
To the Sole and the Sprat,
And the Willeby-wat:
But he never came back to me;
He never came back,
He never came back,
He never came back to me.

III.

Calico ban,
The little Mice ran
To be ready in time for tea;
Flippity flup,
They drank it all up,
And danced in the cup:
But they never came back to me;
They never came back,
They never came back,
They never came back to me.

IV.

Calico drum,
The Grasshoppers come,
The Butterfly, Beetle, and Bee,
Over the ground,
Around and round,
With a hop and a bound;
But they never came back,
They never came back,
They never came back.
They never came back to me.

https://www.public-domain-poetry.com/edward-lear/calico-pie-23368
A.M.B. :roll:

Between illnesses, work, and vacation, May wasn't my best Librivox month. But I'm back and ready to do some more recording, editing, and PLing!
owee
Posts: 21
Joined: May 23rd, 2020, 6:21 pm

Post by owee »

Hi,

I’m having some difficulty. I wanted to read the short story “The Signal Man” by Charles Dickens but I’m not sure if this is the correct thread. I would appreciate being pointed in the right direction. Thanks in advance,

Owee
lurcherlover
Posts: 1206
Joined: November 10th, 2016, 3:54 am
Location: LONDON UK

Post by lurcherlover »

owee wrote: June 2nd, 2020, 12:27 am Hi,

I’m having some difficulty. I wanted to read the short story “The Signal Man” by Charles Dickens but I’m not sure if this is the correct thread. I would appreciate being pointed in the right direction. Thanks in advance,

Owee
You need - this is the current short story collection 088.
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=80135
Mayerdoor
Posts: 1
Joined: May 30th, 2020, 4:39 am

Post by Mayerdoor »

aradlaw wrote: January 22nd, 2017, 9:45 am
miss stav wrote:I read a beautiful poem called Christmas In The Workhouse by George Sims. It is in the public domain. I wanted to start it as a fortnightly poem, as it is muhch too long to be a weekly poem, I think. But I cannot see the weekly and fortnightly poem's thread so cannot plann when to start. Would you please let me know when the current one closes and if you have something in mind and when it would be ok for me to start? Thanks in advance,.
I would strongly advise you not to record it on christmas and I think it is here:
https://archive.org/details/dagonetballadsc00simsgoog
I hope you would like it.

Stav.
Stav, you can set this up for the next Fortnightly due to start January 29.
It seems to capture the spirit of these troubled times.
SonOfTheExiles
Posts: 2649
Joined: December 20th, 2013, 1:14 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Post by SonOfTheExiles »

Opinion is divided as to whether this poem by a notorious bohemian was sincere or whether he was trying to burnish his credentials as a lady’s man.

How you find it might well determine how you read it...

https://m.poemhunter.com/poem/in-a-lady-s-album/

In A Lady's Album
by Marcus Clarke


WHAT can I write in thee, O dainty book,
About whose daintiness faint perfume lingers—
Into whose pages dainty ladies look,
And turn thy dainty leaves with daintier fingers?

Fitter my ruder muse for ruder song,
My scrawling quill to coarser paper matches;
My voice, in laughter raised too loud and long,
Is hoarse and cracked with singing tavern catches.

No melodies have I for ladies’ ear,
No roundelays for jocund lads and lasses—
But only brawlings born of bitter beer,
And chorussed with the clink and clash of glasses!

So, tell thy mistress, pretty friend, for me,
I cannot do her hest, for all her frowning,
While dust and ink are but polluting thee,
And vile tobacco-smoke thy leaves embrowning.

Thou breathest purity and humble worth—
The simple jest, the light laugh following after.
I will not jar upon thy modest mirth
With harsher jest, or with less gentle laughter.

So, some poor tavern-haunter, steeped in wine,
With staggering footsteps thro’ the streets returning,
Seeing, through gathering glooms, a sweet light shine
From household lamp in happy window burning,

May pause an instant in the wind and rain
To gaze on that sweet scene of love and duty,
But turns into the wild wet night again,
Lest his sad presence mar its holy beauty.
Currently on sabbatical from Librivox
SonOfTheExiles
Posts: 2649
Joined: December 20th, 2013, 1:14 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Post by SonOfTheExiles »

THE MIND'S KINGDOM
by Marcus Clarke

(“ My minde to me a kingdome is, — Byrd.")

“THY mind to thee a kingdom is !’
Take heed to rule it well,
For in it thou shalt find, I wis,
Thy Heaven or thy Hell.
Thou art the monarch of the land,
None can dispute thy sway ;
For good or ill do thou command,
Thy subjects straight obey.

Say ! — Would'st thou win Heroic fame,
And play the Patriot's part ?
In Youth's fierce sun thy banners flame,
And Hope drums in thine heart.
Give onset, and against Life's foes
Thy legioned thoughts advance,
While Poesy the trumpet blows
And Satire shakes the lance !

But when the fiery fight is done,
When sinks the drawbridge down,
When thou Fame's citadel hast won,
And glowing grasped the crown.
Thy shattered hosts wail forth thy fate,
And bid thee homeward haste
To find thy Hearth left desolate
And all thy Kingdom waste.

Would'st Joy and Pleasure entertain,
And sport with lustv Love ?
Thy fields are fair with April rain.
The sky bends blue above.
Pavilioned in thy bowry Spring
Clip close thy Beauty bright,
While wanton birds about thee sing
Of Dalliance and Delight.

But when thou plucked red Passion's flowers,
And drained Life's Chalice dry,
Unbidden to thy fading bowers
Comes foul Satiety —
Joy droops and dies, Love shuddering flies,
And bids thee homeward fare
To find grim winter in the skies
And all thy kingdom bare.

Ah ! Would'st thou rule thy realm aright,
Let foolish Fame pass on,
Bid fond Ambition quit thy sight,
And Passion wild begone.
With Health and Labour till thy fields.
Then, when thy Spring is spent,
Thou'lt reap — nor Fame nor passion yields -
The Harvest of Content.

Let Poesy have welcome's dole —
Yet ever as she sings —
Fast to thy Duty bind thy soul
With Wisdom's golden strings,
So shalt thou in its prime possess
Thy kingdom fair and free,
And crown in all her loveliness
Thy Queen— Tranquility !


https://archive.org/details/australianediti00mackgoog/page/n537/mode/1up
Currently on sabbatical from Librivox
SonOfTheExiles
Posts: 2649
Joined: December 20th, 2013, 1:14 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Post by SonOfTheExiles »

It is a truism that one should always be very careful when preaching on the subject of suffering, as there will always be those in one’s audience who will know far more about pain and suffering than oneself.

The Sword Of Pain
by George Essex Evans
https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/evans-george-essex/poems/the-sword-of-pain-0015012

The Lights burn dim and make weird shadow-play,
The white walls of the ward are changed to grey,
Down the long aisle of beds, with tender grace,
Sleep smoothes the lines on many a weary face;
Yet there are those for whom no midnight brings
Solace and strength to face the day again,
And, over all, with wide majestic wings,
There broods the awful mystery of Pain.
Night wears apace, and now the silence breaks
As here and there some fitful slumberer wakes;
And Pain triumphant—Pain with burning grip—
Wrings grudging tribute from the tortured lip:
A strong man’s groan, a boy’s short sobbing cry,
Pierces the stillness with a sudden breath,
Or the low moan of long-drawn agony,
Asking not respite but the boon of Death.

Here, in the halls of suffering, eye to eye,
Men measure Death, and mark if he pass by;
Here, in the halls of suffering, swings the strife
Wherein man’s skill and Death contest for life;
Here woman moves in tenderest ministeries,
With gracious hands that calm the throbbing brain:
Skill and compassion facing fell disease,
And mercy watching by the bed of pain.

Ah! Night and day, in armour like the snow,
Patient and brave, the grey-robed nurses go,
With light swift steps, low voices, cheery smiles,
From bed to bed, adown those dolorous aisles—
Angels of Succour, girt with snowy mail,
As warriors donned of old their armour bright:
Serene, when danger bids the bravest quail,
Against the batteries of Death they fight.

Here, in the restless night, upon my bed,
Whilst bands of steel seem tight’ning round my head,
Strong tides are rushing through my heart and brain
The Goal of Life? The Mystery of Pain?
Now on the rising wind that roars without
Murmurs and discord mingle till it seems
The Voice of the World’s Wounded, and about
Me seem to be the dreams that are not dreams.

“Wherefore, Great Architect, whose power august
Buildeth the universe of very dust,
And that imperial Palace of the Mind
More stately than the stars; who dost not bind
Thought that can conquer Nature, and above
The power of Mind hast set the power of Love—
O Thou, who weavest through this web of strife
Strands of great agony and bloody rue—
Must we still search this labyrinth of Life
To perish groping blindly for the clue?”

Even as I cried the grey walls fell away,
The long ward vanished in the glare of day,
The broad world spread before me, and I saw
Thousands lie stretched in the red swathes of War,
In rigid wreck, like fields of storm-crushed corn—
Grey faces twisted to a horrid smile,
And limbs and piteous bodies wrenched and torn,
Mangled unspeakably, strewn pile on pile.

I turned to Peace amid her olive trees:
Great cities rose before me, villages,
The spacious mansion and the lonely cot—
There was no door that Pain had entered not.
I heard like sobbings of an unseen tide
Its keen fire run through all things, and I said:
“Peace masks a secret war on every side.
There is no rest from travail: God is dead.”

No more the solid earth my footsteps prest;
The wide sky caught me upward to its breast.
The living ether seemed a quick’ning sea,
Where thrilled unseen the germs of worlds to be.
At times I seemed to move upon the verge
Of some vast viewless current streaming far,
And my brain quivered, as, with mighty surge,
Strange thought-waves swept the gulfs from star to star.

In ordered majesty each System runs,
With mighty planets circling sovran suns,
And strange pale moons like ghosts that haunt the scene
Of their once living glory; and serene,
Slow dying stars, dreaming of days forgot,
Of silent worlds and ancient memories—
White mountain-crest, dense forest, secret grot,
Wide plains, wild shores, the crash of plunging seas.

Like a blown leaf, caught by the vagrant air
That still ascends, I mounted: Everywhere
Dead suns and satellites—a lightless train
In darkness rushing to be born again—
Hurled through the void, or, by fierce shock redeemed,
Blazed back to life, and flushed with splendour bright
Thronged spaces and dark rolling orbs that seemed
Millions of black motes in a sea of light.

There is a river whose imperial flow
Circles the mid-most heaven with broad’ning glow;
Its fiery waves are rays of suns supreme,
Crimson and gold its changing currents gleam,
And blue and purest white, and in its tide
Move worlds unnumbered and the starry dust
That builds new suns and powers that shall abide
To rule new regions with a sway august.

Within the airy isle its waters fold
Seven mighty suns circle in quiv’ring gold;
And, over all, uplift above the gire,
Shaped like a cross, a Sword of Living Fire!
Emerald and amber, opal, white and blue
Swift lights, keen tremors flash from point to hilt;
And now blood-red it throbs, as though it knew
The whole world’s agony, the whole world’s guilt.

It is The Cross, sublime, uplifted high;
Great flames break from it, floating down the sky;
As though the blood of Him who, undismayed,
Suffered our sins, dript from its burning blade—
As though the blood of all earth’s noblest ones,
Dreamers and heroes, fell in fiery rain
To temper worlds new-born, and mightier suns—
The Sword of Victory! The Sword of Pain!

Trembling, I spake before that awful sword:
“Where is the golden city of the Lord,
With gates of pearl, and on its crystal sea
Peace and the solace of Eternity?”
Then, like a flash, I knew the air around
Was living ether, and I felt the gaze
Of myriad eyes unseen, and heard the sound
As of vast music known in far-off days.

There fell a star across the ’brow of Night,
And a voice answered, echoing from the height:
“The gods ye fashion perish one by one,
The Living God endures when all are gone.
Fool, canst thou know Th’ Eternal in a day?
Can mortal judge The Immortal face to face,
Who of the star-dust buildeth as He may,
And takes for throne the regions of all Space?”

Eternal Spirit, immanent, apart,
Thou, in the living temple of the Heart,
Lightest thine altar-fires that souls may reign
O’er worlds not yet create, and makest pain
The discipline of Life, the seal of worth,
The test of courage, and the burning star
That leads through vales of darkness to re-birth,
To loftier life and victory afar!

Ah! Not in golden city nor crystal sea,
But in wide circles of Infinity,
Our work is set; and not from harps of gold,
But hearts of men, deep harmonies are rolled!
Vast powers stir around us, and our course may be
By other paths than those our fathers trod;
And Science, with her torch, unconsciously,
Through strange new realms may lead men back to God.

He knows not Life who hath not felt the breath
Nor gazed once in the mocking eyes of Death.
The purest springs, the waters without stain,
Well upward from the burning heart of Pain.
Behold I saw in purest air afar
A great light dawn and widen and increase,
With white flame crested like a perfect star,
Above the Sword of Pain—the Crown of Peace!
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aradlaw
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Post by aradlaw »

SonOfTheExiles wrote: June 13th, 2020, 7:07 pm It is a truism that one should always be very careful when preaching on the subject of suffering, as there will always be those in one’s audience who will know far more about pain and suffering than oneself.

The Sword Of Pain
by George Essex Evans
https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/evans-george-essex/poems/the-sword-of-pain-0015012
Thanks for that suggestion SOTE, I'm afraid that one would be too long, running about 8 minutes. (But you're welcome to read it for one of the Short Collections now running.) :wink:
David Lawrence

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