Great poetry is really cool.
I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall never see.
For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.
I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.
- JRR Tolkien
___
There is an inner center in all of us
Where truth abides in fullness, and around
Wall upon wall the gross flesh hems in
The perfect clear perception which is truth.
A baffling carnal mesh makes all error,
And to know rather consists in finding out a way
For the imprisoned splendour to escape
Than in achieving entry for a light
Supposed to be without.
- Browning, “Paracelsus”
___
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!
If only I yield myself and am borrowed by the wind
That courses through the chaos of the world
Like an exquisite chisel, driven by invisible blows.
I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,
Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.
- DH Lawrence
___
Proud man, dressed in brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep.
- Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”
___
And I will go away. And the birds will remain singing.
And my orchard will remain, with its white well.
All the afternoons the sky will be blue and placid,
and they will touch, as they are touching now,
the bells of the bell tower.
The town will become every year new,
and I will be far from the different Sundays
and the siestas in the corner of my flowery orchard,
my spirit of today will be mistaken, nostalgic...
I will go away, and be another one
without home and green trees,
without blue and placid sky...
And the birds will remain singing.
- Juan Ramon Jimenez